Consider this: A pacemaker powered by your own beating heart. Scientists at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor are developing some snazzy new technology with that very goal in mind. As Reuters reports, their energy-harvesting device runs on piezoelectricity, an electrical charge created by motion. They used a "shaker" in the lab to reproduce vibrations induced by regular heartbeat and connected it to a prototype device, which ended up generating 10 times the power typically used by pacemakers. Their prototype device is 50% smaller than the batteries currently used in pacemakers, and they hope to test it integrated into an actual pacemaker. Story