Entropy Best Paper Award 2015

We are pleased to announce the “Entropy Best Paper Award” for 2015. Nominations were selected by the Editor-in-Chief and designated Editorial Board Members from all the papers published in 2011. Reviews and research papers were evaluated separately. We gladly announce that the following three papers have won the Entropy Best Paper Award in 2015:

Article Award:

1^st Prize

Andrzej Cichocki, Sergio Cruces and Shun-ichi Amari

Generalized Alpha-Beta Divergences and Their Application to Robust Nonnegative Matrix Factorization

Entropy 2011, 13(1), 134–170; doi:10.3390/e13010134

Available online: https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/1099-4300/13/1/134

2^nd Prize

Karan H. Mistry, Ronan K. McGovern, Gregory P. Thiel, Edward K. Summers, Syed M. Zubair and John H. Lienhard V

Entropy Generation Analysis of Desalination Technologies

Entropy 2011, 13(10), 1829–1864; doi:10.3390/e13101829

Available online: https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/1099-4300/13/10/1829

3^nd Prize

Alexey B. Nadykto, Fangqun Yu, Marina V. Jakovleva, Jason Herb and Yisheng Xu

Amines in the Earth’s Atmosphere: A Density Functional Theory Study of the Thermochemistry of Pre-Nucleation Clusters

Entropy 2011, 13(2), 554–569; doi:10.3390/e13020554

Available online: https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/1099-4300/13/2/554

Review Award:

1^st Prize

Christophe Goupil, Wolfgang Seifert, Knud Zabrocki, Eckhart Müller and G. Jeffrey Snyder

Thermodynamics of Thermoelectric Phenomena and Applications

Entropy 2011, 13(8), 1481–1517; doi:10.3390/e13081481

Available online: https://0-www-mdpi-com.brum.beds.ac.uk/1099-4300/13/8/1481

The prize awarding committee congratulates the authors of “Generalized Alpha-Beta Divergences and Their Application to Robust Nonnegative Matrix Factorization” who by introducing a new family of alpha-beta divergences have made a significant advance in the field of signal processing by unifying and generalizing a number of nonnegative matrix factorization algorithms. This work has the potential to significantly impact numerous scientific domains by introducing new robust machine learning algorithms where non-negative matrix factorization finds wide application in the separation of mixed signals.

The article “Entropy Generation Analysis of Desalination Technologies” represents a significant advance in the careful analysis of desalination technologies. The problem of desalination is a significant one impacting hundreds of millions of lives around the world. The analyses performed in this paper identifies which systems operate with the greatest efficiency and which systems have the greatest potential for improvement.

The article “Amines in the Earth’s Atmosphere: A Density Functional Theory Study of the Thermochemistry of Pre-Nucleation Clusters” focuses on a quantum-chemical study of the thermochemical stability of a variety of organic compounds related to the problem of atmospheric nucleation which results in the formation of aerosols in the Earth’s atmosphere. While the authors specifically note that further research is needed, this paper represents an important contribution to Entropy toward understanding the process of nucleation in the Earth’s atmosphere and its impact on Earth’s climate.

The prize awarding committee congratulates the authors of the review paper titled “Thermodynamics of Thermoelectric Phenomena and Applications” for their historical overview focused on the relation between thermoelectric performance and local entropy production. Efficient thermoelectric devices find use in the construction of thermogenerators, thermoelectric coolers and thermoelectric heaters, which are considered to be green technologies. The authors show that minimum entropy production is related to the thermoelectric potential and this fact is critical for the design of the efficient thermoelectric devices.

These four papers are valuable contributions to Entropy. On behalf of the Prize Awarding Committee and the Editorial Board of Entropy, we would like to congratulate these four teams for their excellent work. In recognition of their accomplishment, Dr. Andrzej Cichocki and Dr. Sergio Cruces, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Dr. John H. Lienhard V, will receive prizes of 600 CHF, 400 CHF,200 CHF respectively, along with the privilege to publish an additional paper (subject to peer review) free of charge in open access format in Entropy. Dr. Christophe Goupil will be awarded the privilege to publish an additional paper (subject to peer review) free of charge in open access format in Entropy.

Prize Awarding Committee

Editor-in-Chief

Prof. Dr. Kevin H. Knuth

Department of Physics and Department of Informatics, University at Albany (SUNY), 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222, USA

Section Editor-in-Chief, Section: Quantum Information

Prof. Dr. Jay Lawrence

The James Franck Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA, and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA

Section Editor-in-Chief, Section: Statistical Mechanics

Dr. Antonio M. Scarfone

Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (ISC-CNR), c/o DISAT, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, I-10129 Torino, Italy

Section Editor-in-Chief, Section: Complexity

Prof. Dr. J. A. Tenreiro Machado

Department of Electrical Engineering, Institute of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Porto, Portugal

Editorial Board Member

Prof. Dr. Gian Paolo Beretta

Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Brescia, via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy