Bastian Kirsch, IMK-TRO

Winter storms with wind speeds of up to 180 kilometers per hour cause billions in damage in Europe every year. "The small-scale physical processes that lead to the highest wind speeds are not yet fully understood, let alone explicitly represented in weather forecasting models. However, reliable warnings of extreme weather require precise forecasts," explains Julian Quinting. "What's more, the processes that are crucial for our weather take place in remote regions over the North Atlantic, where there have been few operational observations to date," adds Annika Oertel. Both are involved in preparing the "North Atlantic Waveguide, Dry Intrusion and Downstream Impact Campaign" (NAWDIC) measurement campaign funded by the German Research Foundation for early 2026.

It was an honor and a great privilege to welcome the President of KIT Jan Hesthaven at the YIN Strategy Meeting 2025! The discussion focused on topics like early independence, transparent career paths and reliability. Internationally well-known instruments like the tenure-track system and graduate schools still need to be strengthened and more firmly integrated into the German science system. Another question is how alternate paths to professorship like third-party funded junior research groups are to be reconciled with this approach. While being highly prestigious and competitive, such funding schemes stand for scientific excellence but are not necessarily compatible with a universities research strategy. YIN is curious to find out how KIT will evolve under its new presidency.

https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202409386

Digital one-way functions form the backbone of secure communications and decentralized ledgers. One use case is Bitcoin, where a decentralized consensus is reached via proof of work. Miners are constantly trying to find solutions to inverse problems of these functions to validate transactions. This approach, however, requires computational power on a massive scale: the global carbon footprint of the bitcoin network is comparable to the emissions of Greece. In Advanced Science, Frank Rhein and colleagues now conceptualize a physical one-way function that aims to transform a digital, electricity-consuming consensus mechanism into a physical process. With printing and optical analysis of pigment structures as a feasible example, the setup promises to be mathematically unclonable, reproducible, collision resistant and non-invertible.