Announcements

We are pleased to announce that Entropy received an increased CiteScore of 4.0 in the latest released 2020 CiteScore™ values, published by Elsevier in June 2021. Entropy now ranks 8/67 (Q1) in “Mathematical Physics”, 15/58 (Q2) in “Physics and Astronomy”, 228/693 (Q2) in “Electrical and Electronic Engineering”, and 110/329 (Q2) in “Information Systems”. For full details of the current CiteScore release, please see the journal's Source profile: https://www.scopus.com/sourceid/13715.

We would like to extend our sincerest gratitude to all of the authors, reviewers, and editors who have contributed to the journal and enabled this next big step!

We are pleased to announce that the Outstanding Paper Award, sponsored by Entropy (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy), for the 4th Workshop Quantum Contextuality in Quantum Mechanics and Beyond (QCQMB) was granted to Daphne Wang at University College London. Congratulations!

• “In Search of True Contextuality in Natural Language” by Daphne Wang (joint work with Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Samson Abramsky and Victor Cervantes)

Motivated by ideas of Firth and Harris, computational linguists argue that if two words often occur in the same context, they have similar meanings. Despite the successes of this idea in disambiguation tasks in NLP [1], the systematic existence of ambiguity in natural language and its shades and nuances are not challenges faced head on. Contextuality and its degrees are well studied topics in Quantum Mechanics. Here, the mathematical framework of Contextuality-by-Default (CbD) has become a useful tool when dealing with systems that are signalling and will also be convenient for natural language. Our line of research comes closest to the concept combination examples of [2]. However, as shown in [3], neither of the 23 examples of [2] are truly contextual. In our work, we did find combinations that are truly contextual for the first time. These are from a dataset of rank-2 cyclic (verb, noun) phrases constructed from [4,5], and the probabilities are tabulated from occurrences in corpora (BNC and uKWaC). More general types of systems were considered too, initially using the sheaf-theoretic approach to contextuality, but we showed that none of them are truly contextual. For our rank-2 cyclic dataset, we made use of the degrees of signalling and direct influence from M-Contextuality to find quantitative empirical evidence that the context affects ambiguous senses and meanings of nouns and verbs differently. So far, contextuality has not been found in more general systems, although nothing seems to preclude the existence of contextual examples in certain types of models.

[1] H. Schutze. Automatic Word Sense Discrimination. Computational Linguistics, 24(1): 97-123, 199

[2] P. D. Bruza, K. Kitto, B. J. Ramm, L. Sitbon. A Probabilistic Framework for Analysing the Compositionality of Conceptual Combinations. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 67: 26-38, 2015.

[3] E. Dzhafarov, R. Zhang, V. Cervantes, J. Kujala. On Contextuality in Behavioral Data. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 374, 08 2015.

[4] M Pickering, S. Frisson. Processing Ambiguous Verbs: Evidence from Eye Movements, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27:556--73, 2001.

[5] M.K. Tanenhaus, J.M. Leiman, M.S. Seidenberg. Evidence for Multiple Stages in the Processing of Ambiguous Words in Syntactic Contexts, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18(4):427-440, 1979.

We are pleased to announce that the Best Presentation Award sponsored by Entropy for 6th Quantum Information in Spain (ICE6) conference was granted to Dr. Ignacio Gimeno at University of Zaragoza. Congratulations!

• “Broad-Band Spectroscopy of Electronuclear Spin Qudits Based on Vanadyl Porphyrin Molecules” by Dr. Ignacio Gimeno

The possibility of encoding more than a qubit in vanadyl porphyrin molecules hosting a S = 1/2 electronic spin coupled to a I = 7/2 nuclear spin has been explored. A complete study of the spin Hamiltonian and its parameters, as well as the spin dynamics, has been performed via a combination of electron paramagnetic resonance, heat capacity, magnetization and on-chip magnetic spectroscopy experiments performed on single crystals, observing low temperature spin coherence times of micro-seconds and spin relaxation times longer than a second. For sufficiently strong magnetic fields (B > 0.1 T, corresponding to resonance frequencies of 9–10 GHz), these properties make vanadyl porphyrin molecules suitable qubit realizations. The presence of multiple equispaced nuclear spin levels, then, merely provides eight alternatives to define the ‘1’ and ‘0’ basis states. For lower magnetic fields (B < 0.1 T) and lower frequencies (< 2 GHz), spectroscopic signatures of a sizeable electronuclear entanglement arise. This effect generates a larger set of allowed transitions between different electronuclear spin states and removes their degeneracies. Under these conditions, it can be shown that each molecule fulfils the conditions to act as a universal 4-qubit processor or, equivalently, as a d = 16 qudit. These findings widen the catalogue of chemically designed systems that are able to implement non-trivial quantum functionalities, such as quantum simulations and, especially, quantum error correction, at the molecular level.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a project entitled "Editor's Choice Articles" in Entropy. Please click here to find a list of high-quality and interesting papers that have been specifically recommended by our Editorial Board Members. Among which, we have selected 16 papers to display here. The following is the paper list.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the research groups of the exceptional papers for their contributions to Entropy. Finally, we would appreciate it if you would circulate this document among your colleagues or through your network.

We are pleased to announce that the Best Contribution Award sponsored by Entropy for 2021 International Workshop Open Quantum Dynamics and Thermodynamics was granted to Dr. Martí Perarnau-Llobet at University of Geneva. Congratulations!

“Optimal Finite-Time Carnot Cycle” by Marti Perarnau-Llobet

We considered the optimization of a finite-time Carnot engine characterized by small dissipations. We bound the power with a simple inequality and showed that the optimal strategy is to perform small cycles around a given working point, which can be thus chosen optimally. Remarkably, this optimal point is independent of the figure of merit combining power and efficiency that is being maximized. Furthermore, for a general class of dynamics, the power output becomes proportional to the heat capacity of the working substance. Since the heat capacity can scale supra-extensively with the number of constituents of the engine, this enables us to design optimal many-body Carnot engines, reaching maximum efficiency at finite power per constituent in the thermodynamic limit.

We are very pleased to announce that Prof. Dr. Geert Verdoolaege has been appointed as Section Editor-in-Chief of the “Multidisciplinary Applications” Section in Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300).

Prof. Dr. Geert Verdoolaege is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Ghent University, where he leads the Research Unit Nuclear Fusion. He teaches the courses Plasma Physics and Continuum Mechanics for physics engineering and physics students, and he is involved in fusion education in Europe through international master and PhD programs. He serves as an expert in the topical groups on Transport and Confinement and on Diagnostics of the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA), as well as in the scientific committees of various plasma physics and mathematics conferences.

His current research activities comprise development and application of advanced data analysis techniques for nuclear fusion experiments, using Bayesian probability theory, machine learning and information geometry. Applications include fusion scaling laws, probabilistic modeling of magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and fusion diagnostics, and predictive maintenance.

We warmly welcome Prof. Dr. Geert Verdoolaege in taking up his role as Section Editor-in-Chief, and we look forward to Entropy achieving many milestones under his leadership.

For further information on the journal Section, please visit:
https://www.mdpi.com/journal/entropy/sections/multidisciplinary_applications

Name: Prof. Dr. Geert Verdoolaege
Email: geert.verdoolaege@ugent.be
Affiliation: Research Unit Nuclear Fusion, Department of Applied Physics, Ghent University, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium
Interests: probability theory; Bayesian inference; machine learning; information geometry; differential geometry; nuclear fusion; plasma physics; continuum mechanics; statistical mechanics
Homepage: nuclearfusion.ugent.be

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)

In June of this year, MDPI will celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. To mark this significant milestone, we have created a 25th Anniversary page on our website that evokes the development of our company over the past quarter-century.

MDPI has been a pioneer of Open Access publishing ever since the concept was first created.

In a wide-ranging interview, our CEO Delia Mihaila reflects on the company’s 25th anniversary and its contribution to the world of scientific publishing.

Delia considers how MDPI has evolved since starting life in 1996 as a visionary ‘project’ run out of an apartment in Basel, Switzerland, by Dr. Shu-Kun Lin. A chemist who was passionate about the long-term preservation of rare chemical sample, Dr. Lin was determined to help scholars publish their findings as quickly as possible and make their research results available to as wide a readership as possible worldwide. That determination remains unchanged 25 years later.

Today, MDPI is an international organization with over 4,000 employees based on three continents and in ten countries, and ranks among the world's top four academic publishers.

MDPI's mission is to accelerate access to new scientific research, delivering insight faster for researchers worldwide. Read more here about the company's remarkable success story and what the Open Access publishing model can offer the global scientific community.

At MDPI, we strive to make your online publication process seamless and efficient. To achieve this, our team is continuously developing tools and features to make the user experience useful and convenient.

As the number of academic papers continues to grow, so does the need to analyze and work with them on a large scale. This prompted us to design a new feature aimed at helping researchers find journals that are relevant to their publication by matching their abstract topic. In this regard, we designed a similarity model that automatically identifies the most suitable academic journals for your paper.

We are pleased to introduce Journal Selector, a new feature that measures similarity in academic contexts. By simply entering the title and/or abstract into our Journal Selector, the author will see a list of the most related scientific journals published by MDPI. This method helps authors select the correct journals for their papers, highlighting the time of publication and citability.

The methodology is known as representation learning, where words are represented as vectors in hyperspace. Representation helps us differentiate between different concepts within articles, and in turn, helps us identify similarities between them.

We used an advanced machine learning model to better capture the semantic meanings of words. This helps the algorithm make better predictions by leveraging scientific text representation. In turn, this ensures high precision, helping authors decide which journal they should submit their paper to.

The goal is to support authors to publish their work in the most suitable journal for their research, as fast as possible, accelerating their career progress.

Contact: Andrea Perlato, Head of Data Analytics, MDPI (email)

In November 2020, the Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (SEIB) became affiliated to Sensors and Entropy. As part of this collaboration, all members of SEIB enjoy a discount on the article processing charges (APC) when submitting articles to the journals.

The Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (SEIB) is a non-profit organization representing the biomedical engineering community in Spain. Its mission is to improve the health, wealth, and wellbeing of Spanish citizens through the application of biomedical engineering (BME).

SEIB is a professional organization whose functions are highly relevant to the scope of Sensors and Entropy. We look forward to collaborating with SEIB and publishing state-of-the-art research from its members in this field.