Entropy, Volume 3, Issue 3 (September 2001) – 5 articles , Pages 76-226

In its modern formulation, the Maximum Entropy Principle was promoted by E.T. Jaynes, starting in the mid-fifties. The principle dictates that one should look for a distribution, consistent with available information, which maximizes the entropy. However, this principle focuses only on distributions and it appears advantageous to bring information theoretical thinking more prominently into play by also focusing on the "observer" and on coding. This view was brought forward by the second named author in the late seventies and is the view we will follow-up on here. It leads to the consideration of a certain game, the Code Length Game and, via standard game theoretical thinking, to a principle of Game Theoretical Equilibrium. This principle is more basic than the Maximum Entropy Principle in the sense that the search for one type of optimal strategies in the Code Length Game translates directly into the search for distributions with maximum entropy. In the present paper we offer a self-contained and comprehensive treatment of fundamentals of both principles mentioned, based on a study of the Code Length Game. Though new concepts and results are presented, the reading should be instructional and accessible to a rather wide audience, at least if certain mathematical details are left aside at a rst reading. The most frequently studied instance of entropy maximization pertains to the Mean Energy Model which involves a moment constraint related to a given function, here taken to represent "energy". This type of application is very well known from the literature with hundreds of applications pertaining to several different elds and will also here serve as important illustration of the theory. But our approach reaches further, especially regarding the study of continuity properties of the entropy function, and this leads to new results which allow a discussion of models with so-called entropy loss. These results have tempted us to speculate over the development of natural languages. In fact, we are able to relate our theoretical findings to the empirically found Zipf's law which involves statistical aspects of words in a language. The apparent irregularity inherent in models with entropy loss turns out to imply desirable stability properties of languages. Full article

This paper illustrates the natural role that Hellinger processes can play in solving problems from ¯nance. We propose an extension of the concept of Hellinger process applicable to entropy distance and f-divergence distances, where f is a convex logarithmic function or a convex power function with general order q, 0 6= q < 1. These concepts lead to a new approach to Merton's optimal portfolio problem and its dual in general L¶evy markets. Full article

Energy, entropy and exergy concepts come from thermodynamics and are applicable to all fields of science and engineering. Therefore, this article intends to provide background for better understanding of these concepts and their differences among various classes of life support systems with a diverse coverage. It also covers the basic principles, general definitions and practical applications and implications. Some illustrative examples are presented to highlight the importance of the aspects of energy, entropy and exergy and their roles in thermal engineering. Full article

It is shown that the classical laws of thermodynamics require that mechanical systems must exhibit energy that becomes unavailable to do useful work. In thermodynamics, this type of energy is called entropy. It is further shown that these laws require two metrical manifolds, equations of motion, field equations, and Weyl's quantum principles. Weyl's quantum principle requires quantization of the electrostatic potential of a particle and that this potential be non-singular. The interactions of particles through these non-singular electrostatic potentials are analyzed in the low velocity limit and in the relativistic limit. It is shown that writing the two particle interactions for unlike particles allows an examination in two limiting cases: large and small separations. These limits are shown to have the limiting motions of: all motions are ABOUT the center of mass or all motion is OF the center of mass. The first limit leads to the standard Dirac equation. The second limit is shown to have equations of which the electroweak theory is a subset. An extension of the gauge principle into a five-dimensional manifold, then restricting the generality of the five-dimensional manifold by using the conservation principle, shows that the four-dimensional hypersurface that is embedded within the 5-D manifold is required to obey Einstein's field equations. The 5-D gravitational quantum equations of the solar system are presented. Full article