Hot spot

A hotspot is a center of high activity within a larger area of low activity. The term is applied to different things in different contexts:

• In geology, a hotspot is a location on the Earth's surface that has vulcanism for a long period of time. Originally thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the mantle-core boundary , the latest geological evidence is pointing to upper-mantle convection as a cause . Geologists have identified some 40-50 such hotspots, with Hawai'i, Yellowstone, and Iceland overlying the most currently active.
• In genetics, a hotspot can be
  • a position on the DNA where mutations occur with an unusual high frequency
  • a position on the DNA where recombination occurs with an unusual high frequency
• In meteorology, a hotspot is an area where the atmosphere is relatively hot. Examples of hotspots include the air over a desert or the region of Jupiter where the Galileo probe's atmospheric sub-probe descended.
• A hotspot is a Wi-Fi access point or area, in particular for connecting to Internet.
• The Hot Spot is a 1990 movie with Don Johnson and Jennifer Connelly
• Sun Microsystems' HotSpot technology is an optimised Java runtime.