Science and technology, once the domain of an elite few, currently is available to everyone in the educated world.
We are inundated with television shows, books, and magazine articles, and of course the World Wide Web. Access to information is at an unprecedented level in the history of the human species. We have people working on monitoring our failings as a species, and people developing all types of technologies to move us forward in a search of a better life.
Keeping up with this technological boom is a daunting task, a computer has barely been placed in its shipping container and the hardware it harbours is obsolete.
So what will the future bring? No one can tell you for sure, but many vie for your attention.
The hype over the world ending in 2012, the projected water shortage, the economic crisis facing the world, polluted air, shortage of oil, the worlds shortfall in food; all these challenges face us in the foreseeable future.
Will human kind be wiped from the face of the earth at our own hands in a flash of light, or will some natural phenomena such as a large volcanic eruption take us out slowly with mass starvation?
Bleak scenarios to be sure, but somehow I do not think we will go quietly, nay, go at all.
Doing research for my writing and trying to keep up with the technological changes that affect me in my other endeavours, demonstrates the tenacity and ingenuity of human intelligence.
Collectively we are developing some amazing forms of energy production. Researchers are engaging algae, bacteria, and enzymes as microbial work horses for the production of hydrogen, further, when hydrogen is produced by wind or solar, it is considered a renewable fuel.
Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, and having the highest heat value of combustion (HHV) of any energy source, one lb produces 61 000 Btu, it is inevitable that it will be one of the energy sources we use to maintain some semblance of our current life style.
Dr. Shanwen Tao and his research partner Dr. Rong Lan are two scientists with a unique idea.
They are developing a Carbamide Power System at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, U.K.
This technical sounding power system is based on releasing the four hydrogen atoms making up the chemical structure of urea {(NH ) CO}.
Being less tightly bound in the urea molecule than in a water molecule, the hydrogen atoms only require an unheated, electrochemical process to release.
The basic method, the researchers are developing, utilizes a urea and water fuel cell to produce electricity. Urea, also known as carbamide, is a very cheap and common form of fertilizer as urea makes up approximately 2% of mammalian urine.
It has been calculated that an adult human produces enough urine, in a year, to propel a vehicle approximately 2700 kilometres.
Some day we may be able to supply our own liquid fuel utilizing a bodily function we are all too familiar with.