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Keeping up with science

Keeping up with the speed of science gets more difficult every day. We live in the Science Age, an era in the history of the earth when a dramatic new development takes place every day. Some days it is a new medicine, the result of months or years of painstaking research in a laboratory, either by a lone genius or by a team of scientists working in collaboration with others like this cash advance loans lender in the far corners of the globe. 

The results are seen all around us – the rise in life expectancies, the number of new medicines available, advances in transplants and surgical procedures and new developments in health and wellness.     

On other days, the invention or discovery is in the communication sciences, perhaps the greatest advance of the last 20 years, which involve microchips and new methods of making contact through the air, via satellite or under the oceans. This results in new cellphones, new voice protocols or smart-phones which are more like powerful hand-held computers with built-in phones. 

Silicon-based electronics have been the mainstay of the electronics industry for several decades, driving technological breakthroughs that affect virtually all aspects of everyday life. Devices have gotten smaller, faster, more efficient, more powerful, and cheaper. The small laptop computers store ever-increasing amounts of data and we, the users, scratch our heads and wonder what we are going to do with all the information pouring into our minds day after day. 

Feats of engineering continue to amaze and startle us and we wonder how some of the new structures can actually stand up. The latest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, rises 2,000 feet above the ground, a marvel of engineering and construction science. Not many years ago such a project was impossibility. 

Today our scientists are working on new fuels, alternative ways of generating energy, ways of coping with water shortages and the possibilities of controlling the weather, earthquakes and other natural events. Two headlines from this week’s Science Reporter give one a clue as to what’s going on: “Scientists are scrambling to develop substitutes for scarce elements critical to industry,” and “Long prized for their optical properties, nitrogen-based semiconductors may take electronic devices into realms where silicon cannot tread.”   

The food scientists are kept busy coping with droughts and floods which ruin crops. New foods are developed to cope with the vagaries of the world’s economy.  One billion poor people live with chronic undernourishment and scientists are working to come up with affordable new foods. The money required for this has come from a number of sources including governments, NGO's, private enterprise and charities.  

Every new scientific step forward results in new ideas and new challenges for tomorrow’s scientists.