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this is techno innovations that can change lives the science of fighting the fire we're going to explore the intersection of hardware and humanity and we're doing it in the unique way. this is a show about science blow not the ice scientists tonight's techno investigates. whoever bought this way more than they bargained for yes they did it's everywhere in clubs street corners in cars they say it's safe and can help break the cigarette happen if i had to say what is more dangerous honestly at all

but what's really inside those east six you never know what you're getting dr crystal dilworth is a neuroscientist who specializes in nicotine studies she'll bring us the latest research what happens to your lungs when those metal particles go and see them read to davison is an environmental biologist and they're going to be around the corner they went through there really quickly we got them she's off the coast of california where drones are taking some incredible images of migrating whales as this technology becomes available to more people and we're going to see more research is using that i'm filled tor is i'm an entomologist that's our team now let's do some science. hey guys welcome to techno on phil tours joined by maria davison and dr crystal still worth bigger and potentially more dangerous that's the best way to describe what's happening with the smoking alternative known as the cigarettes or vapor it's

an industry that seems to really be exploding i mean you're seeing it everywhere and a part of me wonders if this might be because of some misinformation about thinking that's that's my sense in our doctor crystal dorthy of your ph d. in the study so we've asked you to keep a tab on this there's a lot of academic research is being die. on the safety of the use of these devices but it can't really keep up with a growing industry. enjoy the taste of. what smoking does called in vapors or foggers for competitive cloud chasers all are welcome at crystal vapor one of thousands of bake shops across the country since techno first reported on the v. thing phenomenon in two thousand and thirteen the industry has taken off like wildfire revenue is estimated to reach three point five billion dollars this year

doubling since two thousand and thirteen according to a recent poll ten percent of all american adults are of a thing that's an estimated twenty million people when it comes to kids well conventional tobacco smoking among them is dropping to record lows east cigarettes are a growing concern at the centers for disease control between two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and fourteen alone we saw a tripling in use among us high school students to the point where it was about thirteen point five percent of u.s. high school students had used these products within the past thirty days from the early generation of cigarette lookalikes techno first reported on personal vaporizing devices known as mogs have gone high tech is come a long way baby we've seen the shift move from pens and tanks at least culturally to what we call devices went from mechanical models to basically box models what's going on right now it may sound confusing but the basic mechanics are pretty simple there's a battery powered atomizer that heats up the liquid mixture known as juice entered into vapor which the user inhales. when we first met research i'm an equal you

should wrapped up a study that found harmful metal particulate in the vapor from earlier models in east cigarettes following the evolution of the industry she's updating her study so the original study we had looked at a cart a miser style and cigarette and we had detected high amounts of ten present in the . parts do you still finding heavy metal particulate in the vapor we are still finding yes it's really scary because it's going into people's lungs what happens to your lungs when those metal particles go in and relation of metal especially things like ten can cause stenosis and that could constrict the. you know the airways in the lungs across the hall at u.c. riverside they're studying one of those compounds researcher a lot of it is focused on nicotine concentrations and refillable. in this case the solution tested is tennessee cured by red oak a fluid made by johnson creek enterprises and online seller of the liquids and accessories we order

a bunch of and just most of them just the accuracy of the label and in this case this is eighteen micrograms per milliliter so this be considered a high nicotine concentration so the test here is we'll see how much it's measuring from the speak and we'll compare that to what's on the label and as you can see from our control it was a lot higher so we know for sure that it is nicotine and recent paper that we published we found out that this specific sample was fifty nine percent higher nicotine than it's advertise able to ever bought this way more than they bargained for and yes they did take no asked johnson creek enterprises about its nicotine labeling discrepancy they offer this statement between twenty eleven and two thousand and twelve there was a noticeable improvement in our manufacturing process including in process controls and analytical methods for testing nicotine concentration with greater accuracy while the company's stated claims point to a step in the right direction the red oak sample that they manufactured with the

fifty nine percent higher nicotine discrepancy was purchased for the u.c. riverside study online in february two thousand and twelve well within the range of johnson creek stated internal improvements in controls and accuracy but they're not alone currently u.c. riverside is evaluating a new batch of liquids from a variety of vendors and polyphony results continue to suggest large to. nicotine labeling throughout the industry just based on all the research that we've done you never know what you're getting it could be higher nicotine contribution it could be lower and although lower might sound better that's going to mean they need smoke more interesting what your buy is normally used to researchers are also concerned about the content of the hundreds of flavored liquids that fuels the number one seller is from animal this is a cereal fruit loops flavored with a little bit of milk. a lot of the flavors that are regarded as grass is generally regarded as safe that is a term that's given to flavor in products that can be ingested what's happening to

these flavoring products when they're being aerosolized at these high temperatures and inhaled into the long you have chemical reactions that can break them down into a lot more toxic chemicals known as carbon compounds prime example being formaldehyde that's a very common when everyone's heard of formaldehyde and everyone should know it isn't good so in head to head comparison versus conventional cigarette which one do you think is healthier my opinion i think they're both dangerous i think the narrative that most people are missing is that the public health opponents to vapor have lumped in vapor with the evil tobacco folks that they fought you know back in the eighty's in the ninety's and so they've decided that this is the exact same thing cynthia is the executive director for the smoke free alternative trade association called safaga a v.p. lobby group we need to dispel the idea that these products paper products are the same as combusted tobacco products because they're not so we need to look at any

time that anyone is using a vapor product they're not smoking and that's a win for everybody these is cigarettes they don't contain the seven thousand plus chemicals that conventional cigarettes have and that's always a plus but on the flip side i they do have their own set. compounds that you're being exposed to unfortunately we're going to have to wait for the long gemini studies but if i had to say what is more dangerous honestly i they're they're equal to me they're equal the food and drug administration which regulates tobacco is still reviewing vaporing regulations travis padgett has been smoking since high school today to cut down on tobacco use for me it was you know it was kind of like a different you when you're getting now a microbiology major at u.c. riverside travis is babying for science participating in a study that measures his intake puff duration volume and frequency when you get out of here you're going to have a science degree why not wait for science now before we know if it's safe i mean

it's either a vapor a smoke cigarettes and we already know cigarettes are bad so roll the dice exactly it's a roll of the dice so. that people that are choosing a thing over conventional cigarettes are choosing the unknown over the know and they know that conventional cigarettes and give them cancer there's a chance that it's better and so they're rolling the dice with that but they're still gambling with their own how and sometimes adults are making more informed decisions with a new of. well absolutely i mean adolescents there are still in a stage of brain development they're not as capable as adults of making good decisions and they're uniquely susceptible to addiction and usually we've got regulations in place that help protect for specifically those kind of cases but here it's so new you know the regulations aren't they haven't kept up obviously that's a major concern all of the regulations of protections that we have developed for tobacco products conventional cigarettes are not there when it comes to the things

will go as fascinating topic and i'm sure crystal you'll keep us up to date on this but. understand you want will watch you did i got to go will watching using drones in the sky so a little bit like spying but it's a great way to observe whales that we normally wouldn't be able to see and we don't really disturb them at all. most times when you see images from a drone something is exploding usually devastation from the air these are the military drones in service around the world. closer to home in california they're also used for important peacetime missions like assisting firefighters by mapping out hot spots during raging wildfires and much has been reported about the use of drones especially when it comes to military applications drones may even become the delivery system for consumer goods but today off the coast of san simeon california researchers using drones like this one here behind me for spectacular use all in

the name of science this is the peters walk of life station this is a very unique piece of property because it sticks out into the migratory corridor or of the northbound gray whale cows and calves a picture perfect location for researchers to fly a science drone to get an unprecedented bird's eye view of what swims below right. but in the distance all i got. for twenty two years wayne perry man and a team from noah have been here from march until may counting and collecting data on great whales migrating north from the breeding grounds of mexico to the arctic a trip of six thousand eight hundred miles this point is kind of a focal point for them and we're able to see them very very well they passed often within one hundred meters of the beach so it's a great place to count animals great whales swim close to land as protection against their main predator killer whales even so it takes

a sharp eye and strong binoculars to spot the northern migration once they do it's go time for a one of a kind unmanned aircraft named mobley. to the rights to the right now move there and then i let the frame the right keep. going out on the service economy of the frame good come down a little that i'm doing to the right as a i'm underwater know a scientist and pilot john durban is tracking a mother and her calf from a distance of about three quarters of a mile out from where he stands john's wife and co researcher holly fernbach is under the towel that shades a control panel giving her a real time video feed that aids in guiding the flight so when they come up next i'm going to move out of the matter taking out markel but the very right adds to be perfect so now it's split second timing for john to remotely trigger the camera to take high definition photographs of the whales are going to be around the corner

they went through there really quickly we got there we did well the. this is really it's all we have a flying a camera and we're trying to make inference about size and shape of whales by taking photographs of school photogrammetry so this is a camera and we want to get above the whales. mobley was built by don the boy at a cost of twenty five thousand dollars it may look like a hobby a stream project but in fact it's packed with many high tech systems to do science so it's called a house a car because it has six motors and six rotors if it's not being told what to do wants to see how we're going to be stable when the air. behind a finish and photos taken from the eye in the sky give scientists

a better look at the overall health of the whales a female has been eating a lot and she spat her whip relative to her length will be different than a female who hasn't eaten very much so we can take just those two measurements and with those two we can get an index of condition index of that this or that female peri min says the. season many of the northbound lactating female gray whales observed appeared more robust than in previous years data that is important for many reasons will health give scientists a snapshot of the balancing act between food sources natural predators even climate change we're getting to the point now where we really can talk about how climate change in the arctic is impacting this population now there's less ice and it's then or there's more photosynthesis going on in the wintertime because like can penetrate and what we want to do is kind of understand that dynamic what's going on . recently john durban and the know it's team took mobley to canada to study killer

whales taken from one hundred feet above this video the first of its kind give scientists a clearer picture of the health of northern resident killer whales in these images the whale on the right appears robust and in good condition while the whale on the left is then and in poor health scientists believe this will later died because it was no longer spotted with its pod. killer whales are important because the competing with this fish we're trying to understand all the getting enough food as this technology becomes available to more people we're going to see more research is using it safer research say for the animals i think it's a win win. from an emotional perspective just being able to see these incredibly beautiful species out in their natural environment we'd never be able to do that and we don't have to disturb them to see them but in terms of the overarching story i mean

a scientist you can collect data on two things what is and what's changing and it seems like this method allows them to collect data that's sort of speaking to both of those objectives they're studying what is now and when things change we'll know yeah and i mean that also speaks to the importance of having these long term data sets right because you have to be able to establish a baseline. which i think they're doing very well we know with twenty two years' worth of data and now with with the changes of climate change you know that that's a really powerful set a date it to to give us a sense of what's what's on the horizon. you are going to tell us about a unique skill or you took of a little unusual lab and it's right here you know it's basically a lab full of trash and for invited us to check out the ways that they're making the auto industry a little bit greener so clearly a lot of environmental incentives here a plan there you know obviously when you use recycled materials over new ones are going to be saving a little bit of money but they also found some new ways to solve some old problems

using some very cool methods so saying look. it's taken over a century but today car manufacturers are getting into high gear when it comes to going green from hydrogen fuel cell cars to electric plug ins and hybrids mileage is going up and with a least ten percent of vehicles environmental impact in the assembly process manufacturing is going green to. companies like toyota g.m. volkswagen ford and honda are all stepping up eco friendly methods zero waste factories diverting millions of pounds from landfills reusing water recycling sludge and going solar powered and it's not just assembly take forward eighty five percent of its cars are renewable recyclable or compostable everything from recyclable aluminum bodies in engine parts to so we form seats in fabrics made from

five million was cycled plastic bottles and this is where the ideas percolate the materials research lab at ford headquarters in dearborn michigan what would you say is the craziest thing that you guys work with when you think those are they hook ups yes oh these are cigarette. filters it's a cellulose yes a tape fiber and so we're looking at that fiber as a reinforcement for plastics debbie moleski storage of the lab back in two thousand and one was sort of foam oil was about forty dollars a barrel and so nobody saw a reason to use plant based materials even though there was an environmental improvement when we launched our soil base foams oil was about one hundred fifty dollars a barrel and so suddenly what was a very poorly received idea was very well received instead of the petroleum base the foam and every seat in north america is made of michigan soil and now the lab

is testing algae oil with its more global reach plastics researcher ellen lead gave techno the first public look at this newest experimental phone rang and how do you add in the surf back then the swan. and that's acts like the egg and the plant everything together and then i'm going to have you add the following agent which in our case is water i'm going to mix this up. and then we'll see the foam start to react. oh. there goes the bacon into a cake so you can see all the gas bubbles all ready for we use this to kind of evaluate our formulation and how fast it comes out why is it important that this reacts fast how fast you can be made each part is really important for manufacturing because we want to be able to make things in a timely manner are we talking a matter of minutes per phone seat or seconds or less than a minute ford is aiming to make the plastics at least twenty percent bio based this

is actually making the plastic stronger yes it does. these parts are later in ways i can show you one that is made from temp versus glass and it's about a thirty percent weight reduction so if we continue to do this we will improve fuel economy as well ford says it's already diverted more than thirty million pounds of plastic. for north american landfills with materials as diverse as we grass coconut hair shredded jeans and millions of dollars of green banks a lot of people don't know as money isn't actually paper it's a blend of cotton and linen trying to grind it down into a smaller finer grunt research engineer giuseppe look hillary has showed me how would stun bullets crime some wanting to use a crime grinder there's a shuttle that goes inside and using magnets it turns the magnets on and off and it will move the shuttle back and forth between the two metal ends smashed the money using liquid nitrogen around liquid nitrogen the liquid nitrogen all just cool the money down to a brittle so it's easy to smash and turn on the machine. oh

yeah that. powder morning then it's melted in with plastic and formed into pellets you melt them down and then you formed them into things like this right and this is a coin trick that is a coin to your money money back into your vehicle what is this tomato. these are actual skin leaves and stems from the tomato plants from hines's ketchup production they process millions of pounds of tomatoes every year and they have a lot of left over why is this a good product for you guys to use we can use this to reinforce our plastics to make them stiffer but then at the same time we can start in the lab is in the very early stages of testing the tomato based possibilities making samples bun melting and mixing plastic extruding it into pellets and molds for testing you would mention part of the test is actually the smell you know if they're driving

a lot and they may not want to smell tomatoes because they might get angry. so what's your big end goal for all of this we all have kids and we want to make sure that there's a green nice planet for them with materials that they can continually replenished. i don't want them to depend on petroleum as their only source of materials. sitting between you guys is of course ten thousand dollars worth of cash but unfortunately it is old cash shredded would normally go to the trash but in this case they're reusing it making trees and this idea of closing the materials you know going as much as we possibly can to words zero waste and manufacturing it's not just lip service anymore it's happening and it makes total business sense i think it's so interesting to see that cross industry collaboration like catch up and ford motor is that these aren't really two companies that i would think would

work together in this way i mean i as a chemist i think a lot about it is a green chemistry that you want all of the by products of your chemical reactions to be used for their reactions and that's kind of like how i think about it but this is really created when your doctor crystal. that has been in the past only catch up in car interactions when i spilled ketchup and my car been there from the california coast all the way over to detroit we've covered a lot of ground today guys and covered some pretty interesting topics so thanks for that level up more for you next time on techno see that dive deep into these stories and go behind the scenes with al-jazeera don't comb slash techno. our expert contributors on twitter facebook instagram google plus and more. it's very difficult as a shuffle restaurant tour to buy shrimp with the kong for the eggs that way you're serving it's going to be good seafood by nature it is

a high risk sometimes for production drugs. that are not approved for us the f.d.a. simply isn't casting enough on the imported market to really find all of things biologic take no.

in a four part series a russian filmmaker travels across his homeland to discover what life is like under putin many russians to somebody with a difficult job rather than an authoritarian leader with imperial ambitions and many critics of putting equally critical of the west meeting with russians from across the political spectrum andrei next discovers a complex attitude towards that country's leader and his policies in search of putin's russia the now jazeera al-jazeera is there with us tory breaks but it's also the to see what happens next. she. fired by the readers where mobile

barricaded the seventh street that b.b.q. here in the middle east now has been all about change people have gone here the area the mission of the national army is to search the entire complex and al-jazeera stories about telling it from the people's perspective what they think is happening in their culture. soldiers in take over the national radio station while the president's abroad for medical treatment. times i mean. there are a lot of from dull also coming up the u.s. delegation holds talks in china to end the trade war that threatens to damage the global economy. forty years after the.