Dear pss readers, As the previous year approached its end, news on three excellent prize winnings and nominations of pss authors and editors reached us: Gerhard Abstreiter of TU Munich will receive the Stern–Gerlach Medal 2014, the highest prize of the German Physical Society for experimental physics, honoring his work on low‐dimensional electron systems in semiconductor hetero‐ and nanostructures. His Review@RRL on InGaAs nanowires on silicon is opening the 2014 volume of pss (RRL) 1]. It is a welcome addition to our recent successful Focus Issue on Semiconductor Nanowires 2]. Our long‐term Editorial Advisory Board member, Wiley author and Guest Editor, Rainer Waser of RWTH Aachen and Research Centre Jülich, is one of the 11 winners of the highly prestigious Leibniz Prize for his outstanding research on nanoelectronics, especially oxides, ferroelectrics and resistive switching 3, 4]. Last but not least, one of the three nominated teams for the German Future Prize has been led by Wolfgang Schnick , LMU Munich, and Peter J. Schmidt , Philips Lumileds Aachen. Their groundbreaking work on new phosphor materials in white light emitting diodes (LEDs) for solid‐state lighting 5] goes back to a highly‐cited pss (a) article from 2005 6] (see figure). The technology is now being commercialized and expected to enable energy savings on a grand scale in the coming years. Speaking of energy, research results related to this global challenge have been important throughout the year, touching areas such as thermoelectrics 7], efficiency of organic LEDs 8] and photovoltaics 9]. The latter field is even better represented since the recent introduction of our section rrl solar, covering solar cell materials or device development and characterization (see Editorial 10]). The full‐paper sister journals pss (a) and (b) presented an unprecedented number of high‐profile special issues in 2013 11–15]. With heartfelt gratitude we look back onto fruitful collaboration with highly engaged guest editors, who helped bring to light issues such as the “Advanced Concepts for Silicon Based Photovoltaics” 11], the “Quantum Criticality and Novel Phases” 12], the “Disorder in Order: A special issue on amorphous materials” 13], the “Substrate Interactions in Heterogeneous Catalysis” 14], and the “Quantum Transport at the Molecular Scale” 15] among other interesting topical issues and sections. Both contributors and fine articles are too numerous to do justice to all of them here. We must restrict ourselves to a general invitation to browse this content, only hinting a few possible starting points, such as topological insulators 16], molecular electronics 17] and quantum phase transitions 18].
