We've seen a couple interesting attempts to convert vibrations and sound into electricity, but the latest design from a team at the University of Southampton is the first we've come across that's designed to be attached to bridges, large buildings, and other structures. The sugar cube-sized generator, a smaller version of a design already commercially available, uses cantilever-mounted magnets to induce a current in a copper coil -- a use of magnets to generate electricity that doesn't violate any laws of thermodynamics, which is always appreciated. The team has successfully used the generator to power an accelerometer (pictured), and tests indicate that the unit can put out up to 46 microwatts of power -- enough to run a pacemaker off the vibrations of the heart itself. No word on commercial availability, but the team seems like they're ready to get shaking fairly soon.

News outlets and weather stations alike have been searching for more responsive (and foretelling) methods to detect massive storms before they make landfall, and it seems a simple hard drive or two could help out substantially. While certain folks have tried to get fancy and implement mobile warnings to alert citizens of incoming tsunamis, Michael Stadler has devised a P2P software solution that uses plain 'ole hard drive vibration detectors to not only keep the read / write heads aligned, but to feed analytic software those same quaking measurements. By having numerous supernodes compare vibration levels, the software can reject false alarms and substantiate actual threats based on the uniformity of the data -- if an actual tsunami looks to be rushing inward, all connected clients could be immediately informed to brace for impact. While Stadler's software is still in an "experimental stage," it recently caused quite a stir at the Ars Electronica exhibition, and could probably entice a few proactive governments to fund future development.

[Via Slashdot]