Nanowires: A route to efficient thermoelectric devices

Miniaturization of electronic devices aims at manufacturing ever smaller products, from mesoscopic to nanoscopic sizes. This trend is challenging because the increased levels of dissipated power demands a better understanding of heat transport in small volumes. A significant amount of the consumed energy is transformed into heat and dissipated to the environment. Thermoelectric materials offer the possibility to harness dissipated energy and make devices less energy-demanding. Heat-to-electricity conversion requires materials with a strongly suppressed thermal conductivity but still high electronic conduction. Nanowires can meet nicely these two requirements because enhanced phonon scattering at the surface and defects reduces the lattice thermal conductivity while electric conductivity is not deteriorated, leading to an overall remarkable thermoelectric efficiency. Therefore, nanowires are regarded as a promising route to achieving valuable thermoelectric materials at the nanoscale. In this paper, we present an overview of key experimental and theoretical results concerning the thermoelectric properties of nanowires. The focus of this review is put on the physical mechanisms by which the efficiency of nanowires can be improved. Phonon scattering at surfaces and interfaces, enhancement of the power factor by quantum effects and topological protection of electron states to prevent the degradation of electrical conductivity in nanowires are thoroughly discussed

Hawking-like emission in kink-soliton escape from a potential well.

The escape of solitons over a potential barrier is analysed within the framework of a nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation. It is shown that the creation of a kink–antikink pair near the barrier through an internal mode instability can be followed by escape of the kink in a process analogous to Hawking radiation. These results have important implications in a wider context, including stochastic resonance and ratchet systems, which are also discussed

XMM-Newton and Deep Optical Observations of the OTELO fields: the Groth-Westphal Strip

OTELO (OSIRIS Tunable Emission Line Object Survey) will be carried out with the OSIRIS instrument at the 10 m GTC telescope at La Palma, and is aimed to be the deepest and richest survey of emission line objects to date. The deep narrow-band optical data from OSIRIS will be complemented by means of additional observations that include: (i) an exploratory broad-band survey that is already being carried out in the optical domain, (ii) FIR and sub-mm observations to be carried with the Herschel space telescope and the GTM, and (iii) deep X-Ray observations from XMM-Newton and Chandra.Here we present a preliminary analysis of public EPIC data of one of the OTELO targets,the Groth-Westphal strip, gathered from the XMM-Newton Science Archive (XSA). EPIC images are combined with optical BVRI data from our broadband survey carried out with the 4.2m WHT at La Palma. Distance-independent diagnostics (involving X/O ratio, hardness ratios, B/T ratio) are tested.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, uses graphicx package. To appear in proceedings of "The X-Ray Universe 2005", San Lorenzo del Escorial, Spain, September 26-30, 200

A class of Hamilton-Jacobi equations on Banach-Finsler manifolds

The concept of subdifferentiability is studied in the context of $C^1$ Finsler manifolds (modeled on a Banach space with a Lipschitz $C^1$ bump function). A class of Hamilton-Jacobi equations defined on $C^1$ Finsler manifolds is studied and several results related to the existence and uniqueness of viscosity solutions are obtained.Comment: 24 page

Environmental and social consequences of the increase in the demand for superfoods world-wide

1.The search for healthy diets has led to a surge in the demand for functional foods or ‘superfoods’, which have now become popular among the middle- and high- income fractions of the society in developed regions of the world. ‘Superfoods’ are predominantly consumed far from their centres of origin and out of their cul- tural context with different environmental and social effects. 2. Here, we present a series of case studies to provide an overview of the different environmental impacts driven by superfood expansion. 3. We show that if these crops are to follow the path of other global commodities, then strong environmental impacts and large carbon footprints are expected in terms of land clearing, use of agrochemicals and transportation during times of high prices (boom) and social problems as farmers have to abandon their liveli- hoods when prices sink below the cost of production (bust). 4. We also showcase how a combination of management practices, consumer choices and policy changes could help in alleviating the ecological footprint of these crops.Both A.M. and M.J.S. are funded through Ikerbasque, the Basque Foundation for Science. Research was also supported by the Spanish State Research Agency through María de Maeztu Excellence Unit accreditation (MDM‐2017‐0714) and the Basque Government BERC Programme