the whole place smells of dead koalas. >> sustainable density is thought to be one per hector and what we are observing is three to four as a minimum and up to about 20. more on everything we are covering on our website. the address for that is aljazerra.com. a show about innovations that can change lives. we're going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity and doing it in a unique way. this is a show about science by scientists. let's check out our team of hard core nerds. >> dr. crystal dilworth is a neuroscientist specializing in nicotine research. tonight, e-cigarettes. why they're so addicting to kids and what's really in those fruity flavors. >> breathing particles cause

people to die of heart attacks plain and simple. >> i'm phil torres, an entomologist. tonight i meet the indiana jones of space technology, and discover -- >> we're the same people who. >> kosta grammatis. and lindsay moran. a former cia agent. that's our team. now let's do some science. ♪ ♪ >> hey guys, i'm phil torres. welcome to "techknow" i'm

joined by are crystal dilworth and kosta grammatis. and linda moran. - lindsay moran. >> let's take a look at the safety of e-cigarettes in general. they're fruity flavorful fun and more popular than ever. the explosion in advertising dollars and sales of strong cigarettes are in the billions as the devices are being touted as a safer alternative to smoking tobacco cigarettes. >> i think it's the best thing smoke. >> i wake up in the morning and my lurchtion hurt really bad. i started vaping and it started getting better and better.

>> are the claims really true or are they a smoke screen? the health rirvetion associated with the use of electronic cigarettes associate with the liquids themselves. the research at u.c. riverside, indicates that we shouldn't be just concerned about the are liquids but the devices themselves. >> when you do your experiments in the lab you hope to find something and it all started with one cardomizer. we found burning on the fibers. we kept dissecting and dissecting and found this over and over again. i never thought in a million years i would find this. >> the break through finding is the aerosols the e-cigarettes emit have their own version of secondhand

smoke. >> the e-sig the e-cigs consequence. instead, there's a battery powered atomizer that heats up a liquid mixture inside. this mixture turns into vapor which the individual in in inhales. >> we found there were metal particles that were found in the fluid as well as coating the fibers. >> these pictures are tin particles from the fluids. so i should be concerned that there are similar fibers in my lungs if i am an e-cigarette

user. >> uh-huh. >> wow. so this leads to respiratory complaints. >> yes. >> and other type of i would say lung tissue agitation. >> absolutely. >> even though e-cigarettes are not relatinged by the fda many individuals feel they are more tox irk than smoke -- tomorrowic than smoking tobacco. >> until they know its effects and its public health effects. >> professor susan schick is about to embark on a fda funded study. >> i'm going to model puffing on an e-cigarette. what i'm blowing out is what the person is inhaling. >> this is a

mass photometer. >> 400 -- >> we are now actually spiking. this thing won't read over 100 milligrams. so we shifted from micrograms to over 100 milligrams. it's a lot of particles. the reason i care about particles is that breathing particles causes cardiovascular disease. causes people to die from heart attacks, plain and simple. >> do you think that given that we now know that e-cigarette vapor contains these are metal particles? >> there are a lot of pros and cons. electronic cigarettes they haven't identified all 7,000 much those, significantly a lot fewer. in that aspect it's better than conventional cigarettes but i can't come out and say that using electronic

cigarettes are carry because use -- credit safer because using these humectins, no one knows. it will collect and it can't be removed. >> do you think that they have this new science coming out and it's driving legislation. do you think it's too early for this to happen? >> personally i do. i think the jury's not out yet. all the papers are not published on exactly what the dangers with electronic cigarettes are. we know we don't like to be around vapor, the same way we don't like to be around conventional cr cigarette smoke, secondhand smoke we think is cancerous. why don't know that. >> how far are we from knowing that?

>> the fda is funding studies, ongoing research, research takes time so we'll have to see. >> do you think the government should be precautionary, wait for results just for safety reasons? >> we know it's not entirely water vapor. we know there are particulate matter in the vapor that we should be concerned about. everything from heavy meltal particles to two types of nitrosemines to are are it's not the heavy water vapor this we told it is. >> coming up, why scientists are so concerned about children and teenagers. >> how surprising was this result? >> we want to hear what you think about these stories. join the conversation by following us on twitter and at

>> this relationship between cigarette smoking and health is in the field of lung cancer. there is a very strong relationship, sounds like a causal relationship between heart disease and cigarette smoke. >> this bombshell report 50 years ago by u.s. surgeon general dr. lew they luther terry. >> in this area of general practitioners, surgeons, and so forth, the brand name was camel. >> up to that time, the cigarette was a staple of life.

even this advertisement for camel. >> doctors smoke camels try them for yourself. >> that was then. this is now. >> now that i switched to blue i feel better than myself. >> dr. pamela ling, her recent study of e-cigarettes. >> i finally found a smarter alternative for cigarettes. >> putting smoking in the movies, having celebrity endorsements, and doctor endorsements, which you're seeing once again. >> as diseefn as stephen dorf told us: >> i've just found a smarter

alternatives. blue e-cigs. >> it's vapor not smoke. >> i don't think that anyone really wants to addict like a whole new generation to nicotine but a lot of things from the advertising that appeals to youth could potentially do that . >> electronic cigarettes have been presented as smoking cessation agents for people who are trying to quit smoking. but now that these devices have gone mainstream they've got the attention of doctors and scientists. associated with more conventional cigarette use in teens. what we found is had that the teens who used grealts e-cigarettes were more likely tobacco cigarette smokers. we were surprised by the magnitude of the smoking.

>> were you finding one or the other use or dual use? >> high levels of dual use. common in adolescence when there there was a lot of experimenting. >> from 2011 to 2012, the u.s. centers for disease control. found the use doubled between middle and high school students. >> students had never tried a conventional cigarette not even puff. and many of the high school students had never tried a conventional cigarette. >> their first exposure to nicotine in e-cigarettes. >> it's less irritating to the lungs, you're going to have less desire to cough, because there's no burning vegetable matter inside a e-cigarette. >> especially aluring to kids

are the flavors in e-cigarettes. candy to are juices. >> yogurt land. >> we have all these food grade and fda approved colors and flavors. but those are approved for ingestion through eating not through inhalation, especially being heated to the temperatures. >> the cdc recently released a report that the number of phone calls to poison control related to e-cigarettes have been involving children age 5 and under who are most exposed to the cartridge. linking cigarettes to disease, health warnings are required on every pack of cigarettes. dr. lauren dutra sees the same need on e-cigarettes.

>> how is this different than caffeine? >> the body thinks that nicotine is something naturally occurring and the addictive potential of this drug is higher than other substances that people use that are considered less harmful. >> several cities and states have already banned or restricted the use of e-cigarettes in public places. >> it's a semantic debate whether you call it harmful or not. >> e-cigarettes have been around since 2003. and the makers of e-cigarettes can see change coming. >> we're prepared for that. >> the blue e-cigs website is prepared. >> come on guys, rise from the ashes. >> i understand you brought us something. >> i did. so i -- i have two examples here and i want to see if you can

tell just from looking which one is the strong cigarette and cigarette. can you tell? >> nope. they look exactly the same. >> i would assume the one on the left was the electronic one. >> this is the electronic cigarette and this one has been made out of the smoking cessation agent. this is trien to trying to mimic the conventional cigarette. but they're trying to focus on e-cigarette use, giving you a sense of self expression. i get to choose the mod, the flavor, the color, the expression of me, if i want to put rhinestones on it, i can. >> can you overdose on these? >> not these. these disposable electronic cigarettes come with a are renal amount of nicotine.

but with those ordered online, you can put as much as you want and vap aaway. >> how does that compare? >> a normal cigarette is at 18 grams. a little bit more buzz than a normal cigarette. but when it hasn't been regulated and you can vap inside, it's conventional use. you can have it all the time and so it's a constant intake of nicotine and you're going to get a lot more. >> i know my kids heard about e-cigs and thought they were safe, because they were electronic. >> we love our new iphone why not this new e-cigarette. we have been told it's as safe as water vapor. why not?

>> great stuff, crift. coming up after the -- crystal. coming up after the break.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> hey guys welcome back to "techknow" i'm phil torres joined by lindsay, kosta and crystal. guys i got do meet the most innovative archaeologists of our time. she's using one of these, a satellite to look back into our history doing things as incredible as mapping out ancient egypt. let's go in. to help unearth secrets of the ancient past we found a scientist who looks down from

space into the future. sarah is a pioneering archaeologist. she was the first to map egypt's lost city of tanis. a city that hasn't been seen in 3,000 years. she then used the same technology to discover over 300 settlements. >> there are people out there who see you guys digging around in the dirt and wonder why. >> there are so many things we can learn from people in the past, but the reality is we're the same people that built the picture midst and the same people who built stonehenge. there's an inscription in the western desert and a guy is writing on the face of a cliff man, i can't believe how much i had to drink, my boss is going to be so angry with me, i'm not going to be

able to make it to work tomorrow. three thousand, four thousand years, flog has changed. >> but things have changed. the world has become incredibly complex. dr. parkik has used a way to advance technology. >> you're using a satellite to look into the past,. >> ing us much more focused. today in all scientific fields archaeology is facing a number of challenges regarding funding as well as access to sites on the ground. and we absolutely need new scientific approaches to allow us to know exactly where to go and what to dig. otherwise we're wasting time and wasting money. >> to find out how this works, we turned to the experts of digital dig. >> what is remote sensing? >> remote sensing, believe it or

not we all do, it's sensing without touching something. so our eyesight, our ears, we alt do reploat sensing. what we -- remote sensing. what we are talking about here is a camera in this case in space taking pictures of objects without touching them. >> based in boulder, colorado ball aerospace are constructing the world view 3. it is an incredibly secure location to which we were given rare access. the world view 3 satellite scheduled for launch in summer 2014 represents the latest and greatest advancements in commercial satellite imaging. flying 380 miles above earth its enhanced image sensors can see

through dust smoke and haze. helping science sarah parkik. >> we have satellites that can take pictures of the entire globe. what we have on these slights are red, green, blue, what we can see with the naked eye. also infrared. in world view 3, we have added more bands. short infrared. information about forestry agriculture, geology. there are a lot more things we can do on world view 3 that we can't do on our other satellites today. we call it invisible light. this is short wave infrared that gives us powerful information. >> for world view 3 it will be a game changer. it will allow archaeologist he to see into the middle infrared. that's

different, it will allow us to see what are currently invisible signatures from geological signals that are on the ground. >> our philosophy is, there are so many brilliant people out there. let's leverage their capability, their knowledge. so dr. parkak took some other things we are doing and created something we could have never thought about. we would never be looking for space archaeology, we are focusing on current planet changing. focusing on what happened 4,000 years ago, it's a pleasant surprise. >> what is not a pleasant surprise is present day looting. detected from space. >> following the arab spring many of the guards at egypt and syria simply went away. so a number of individuals have gone after

archaeological sites. we have found these situations to be cultural racket racketeering. to help fund international are like blood diamonds. >> working on geological and archaeological remote sensing images in egypt. >> this was taken in 2010 before the start of the revolution, on the right. on the left it was taken at the end of 2012 beginning of 2013 and you can see all these hundreds of little black holes those are looting pits. >> they told me in egypt, since the revolution we found this kind of looting has

increased, a very huge system. >> it was so bad, some people didn't know about what they were doing. they just blowing our heritage away. that's not good. because once you destroy it, you will not get it again. and you will destroy your history. >> the ultimate goal is to set up training programs so that we can train the really bright enthusiastic young egyptian men and women to use this new technology because ultimately it's the egyptian people who are responsible for protecting their heritage. >> how cool was that? people have been archaeologist he for centuries and we are now living in the most exciting time thanks to technology. >> so exciting for me coming from a military intelligence background, i think of us using this technology to discover things like underground bunkers and weapons of mass destruction.

so to see it unearthing the secrets of the past, something fun and exciting is really neat. >> these are commercial satellites, can be rented out, i know governments can use them but using for less nefarious past. thank you for another fascinating stories. >> dive deep behind these stories and go behind the scenes at aljazeera.com/techknow. follow us on twitter, facebook google plus and more. >> the technology is there... why isn't being done more? how to make recycling work... >> when these different plastics are blended then the recycling becomes difficult, to impossible. >> can we fix america's plastic problem? >> we can't unscramble an egg... >> techknow's team of experts show you how the miracles of science... >> i'm standing in a tropcal wind storm... >> ...can effect and

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