NO ONE HAS IT HARDER THAN THEIR FATHER DID:

Just look at a few of the advances that happened this year:

-- Only 10 weeks after Christmas 2013, the holiday returned in March. Chemists at Notre Dame created a new class of antibiotics to do battle against the infamous MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria. Drug-resistant bacteria currently claim an estimated 700,000 lives each year. That may rise to 10 million by 2050 if the most dire predictions come true. Researchers are resolved to make sure they don't.

-- It felt like Christmas Day on April 30, when physicists announced that they had constructed a tractor beam that can pull microscopic objects with sound waves. According to Hamish Johnston, who reported on the breakthrough for Physics World, the technology could be used to deliver encapsulated drugs to the precise location inside the body that requires treatment.

-- Christmas came early in September, when Apple announced a watch that's like a gadget out of "Star Trek." The Apple Watch wraps an incredible amount of technology around your wrist. Even more importantly, it offers a medium for other tinkerers to toy with. A single app can transform the device from a simple timekeeper to a life-improving gadget.

-- It came again in October, when Lockheed Martin unveiled plans for a compact nuclear fusion reactor that can fit on a truck and power a city of 100,000 people, with almost no pollution. Sewing this vision into reality will be an uphill task, but imagine if it worked. Fusion, quite literally the power of the stars, has the potential to uplift civilization as few other inventions can, producing clean, practically limitless energy.

Twice this month it has already felt like Christmas morning. On Dec. 9, a team of scientists reported that they had engineered artificial skin that's sensitive to heat, humidity, and pressure, bringing us closer to the crafting of prosthetic limbs as functional as the real things. The technological artistry involved was staggering. "The bulk of the new skin is composed of a flexible, transparent silicone material called polydimethylsiloxane -- or PDMS. Embedded within it are silicon nanoribbons that generate electricity when they're squished or stretched, providing a source of tactile feedback," Sarah Fecht described in Popular Science.

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