See the 20080116 f the LA Times article "Inquisition at JPL"

"MSU is at the cutting edge of the potential of thermoelectricity" says US Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan while visiting the  MSU Energy and Automotive Research Laboratories in East Lansing, Michigan USA. The State News story on Levin's visit to MSU includes an aerogel demonstation by Jeff Sakamoto.  The full quote from Levin:

Recent Google searches on thermoelectrics turned up (in no particular order):

I did not attend the MRS 2007 Fall Meeting, Symp. U: Thermoelectric Power Generation held in Boston, MA November 26 - 29, 2007 but reports from those who where there indicate the hall was standing room only for most of the day.  I counted some 132 presentations, which is quite a lot to pack into 4 days.  Titles and authors are available online:

          http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/doc.asp?CID=11140&DID=201650

Nanocomposites and PbTe-related materials (including the LAST materials) were heavily represented. 

The Voyager 2 spacecraft passed through the heliosheath boundary, also called the solar wind termination shock, on August 30, 2007.  A classic example of overdesign, the Plasma Science instrument, radio and power supply (a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator using silicon-germanium thermocouples) are among the systems on Voyager 2 still working 30 years after lauch.

From the NanoFreeze.com website, the Lund, Sweden based company founded in 2005 "develops a thermoelectric coolchip having a high efficiency, 10-15 times higher than so called Peltier-elements working on the same basic principle."   Their website assures us they are using nanotechnology, that they have raised some 7.4 MSEK (US$1.15) venture capital and plan to have their first product in 2010.

Nanocoolers , the Austin,Texas thermoelectric startup (2002) company with 15 employees founded by form IBM researcher Uttam Ghoshal has closed shop after burning through about US$19M of venture captial and about $3M of Texas state funding as reported by the Austin Statesman.   Krishna Srinivasan of Austin Ventures is quoted as saying "we couldn't get it up to the performance level that made it

Prof. Kin-ichi Uemura of Yokohama, Japan (organizer of ICT93 in Yokohama, Japan and long time contributor to thermoelectrics through his previously employer, Komatsu) informs me he has retired as a Patron of ZT Services.  Prof. Uemura's ITTJ ( Institute for Thermoelectric Technologies Japan ) was a charter sponsor of ZT Services and his support these many years has been much appreciated.   At age 85 he maintains his passion and interest in Thermoelectricity and hopes to see further development of the field.