Corrections were made to information presented in Figure 2 of "Thermoelectric generation based on spin Seebeck effects," by Uchida, F. et al., Proc. IEEE, 2016 (DOI: 10.1109/JPROC.2016.2535167).

The spin Seebeck effect (SSE) refers to the generation of a spin current as a result of a temperature gradient in magnetic materials including insulators. The SSE is applicable to thermoelectric generation because the thermally generated spin current can be converted into a charge current via spin-orbit interaction in conductive materials adjacent to the magnets. The insulator-based SSE device exhibits unconventional characteristics potentially useful for thermoelectric applications, such as simple structure, device-design flexibility, and convenient scaling capability. In this article, we review recent studies on the SSE from the viewpoint of thermoelectric applications. Firstly, we introduce the thermoelectric generation process and measurement configuration of the SSE, followed by showing fundamental characteristics of the SSE device. Secondly, a theory of the thermoelectric conversion efficiency of the SSE device is presented, which clarifies the difference between the SSE and conventional thermoelectric effects and the efficiency limit of the SSE device. Finally, we show preliminary demonstrations of the SSE in various device structures for future thermoelectric applications and discuss prospects of the SSE-based thermoelectric technologies.

This paper describes an identification method for book-cover images. It is used in a novel library system using images of books and the borrowers' faces. A returned book is identified from the lent books by processing the images of the book covers. A low-resolution field with four directional features is used to identify the books. These features can be compatible with computation time and performance. To identify a series of books which are similar, but different in just a small area, partial area matching is used. Experiments show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.