We take the raw stuff of our planet,
the materials that give names to the ages...
Stone, bronze, iron and more...
And craft them into new forms,
expanding our horizons...
exploring hidden worlds...
and engineering life-saving technologies,
always pushing the limits
to be colder, faster, safer, wilder.
And now, a new era is upon us.
I'm David Pogue.
Fire! Fire!
And I'm on a quest to live on the edge
and tame our dangerous world.
But it's not easy.
Think of what Mother Nature throws at us.
Is there a way to meet her threats with new technologies...
In about two seconds, that thing was out!
...including buildings that can stand up to a shakedown?
Wow!
Unreal.
And what about threats that seem totally unnatural?
This is uranium?
Can we design defenses
to thwart the bad guys...
There's something high density in there.
...and protect innocent lives?
So this plant can sniff bombs now?
Can engineers protect us from ourselves
with cars that can read the road?
It's not slowing down very much at the curve!
Can we make better gear for our kids?
That allows us to see how hard the hits are.
We're here to make the game safer.
We'll never live in a risk-free world.
And who'd want to?
Are you saying that the human trials are beginning right now?
Here we go!
But we might be able
to breathe a bit easier...
Whoa, that was fast!
...by "Making Stuff Safer."
In Northern California,
Stanford University professor Chris Gerdes
is hard at work in his favorite lab...
The race track... Trying to make cars safer.
I hear you're messing around with automotive safety issues.
Trying some new ideas.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you.
A racing car just went by.
It looks like he's enlisted the help
of an unflappable driver
who never flinches in the face of danger.
He's really pushing that car to its limits!
I'm dying to meet this intrepid maniac
who seems willing to do anything in the name of science.
Hey, that was really...
What? Come on!
There is no driver!
What have you done?
What kind of Satanic ritual is this?
This is Shelley, our self-driving Audi TTS.
Self-driving racing car?
That's right.
There's no one at the wheel.
Shelley drives herself.
And even though she's got a lead foot
and a sweet tooth for squealing tires,
her whole purpose in life... Or in silicon, anyway...
Is to keep human drivers alive.
It may sound crazy,
but Chris designed this robotic speed demon
in order to make our cars safer.
After all, we take a calculated risk
every time we get behind the wheel.
Look at all the terrible drivers out there.
So is there an alternative?
What if our cars could drive themselves?
That brings us back to Shelley.
Turns out she's not just a piece of amazing engineering.
She actually helps Chris study how to push a car
to the very limits of physical performance
without losing control.
One of the things that's inspired us
is to look at how the very best drivers control the car.
So we've looked at race car drivers
who are able to get every bit of the friction
between the tire and the road.
Many accidents occur
when the forces needed to keep the car on the road
overwhelm the force of friction.
That can put the car into a spin or make it impossible to steer.
Race car drivers are masters of the road.
They push their cars to the limit,
at the very edge of control.
In racing, you get to the limits of the car's capabilities
because you're trying to be fast.
In ordinary driving,
you may get to the limits of the car's capabilities
simply because you're on an icy road.
The exact same physics apply in these two cases.
What if he could transfer
the reflexes of a race car driver
into the operating system of a regular car?
That would be like giving the ordinary driver
a computer co-pilot to take over
whenever the car begins to lose its grip.
But how would he do that?
His first step was to wire high-performance cars
with sensors, and have race car drivers
speed around the track as fast as possible,
right up to the point of skidding out of control.
The sensors recorded how the pros steer,
accelerate and brake.
Then Chris translated that driving prowess
into software for Shelley's on-board computer.
Her two GPS antennas,
accelerometers, gyroscopes and other sensors
feed her computer real-time data about position and speed.
The computer then sends commands to the steering system,
throttle and brakes.
Okay, seeing is believing.
Unfortunately, Chris seems to think that riding is believing,
and he wants to put my life
in the hands of Shelley's computer.
We're off.
Just like a big, expensive toy.
Okay, so you're...
I'm not doing anything right now.
This is not slowing down very much at the curve!
We really don't have to.
It just went off the road, dude!
If you don't go up on the rumble strip,
then you're slow.
Any race car driver will tell you that.
What a smart little car.
Shelley is constantly adjusting her position on the track.
Her adjustments just aren't very smooth.
But I guess smooth doesn't matter
if your only priority is staying on the road.
Chris...
Stop...
You okay?
I gotta get out.
Fortunately, Chris can take over at any time.
But understanding how the best drivers drive
is only part of the equation.
Chris needs to know more about how ordinary,
accident-prone drivers perform
in order to figure out how a computer might help them out.
So he and his team have developed another car.
Welcome to X1.
This is an entirely student-built research vehicle
that we're using to develop some of the algorithms for Shelley.
It's cool.
It's kind of like a dune buggy effect.
Researchers can test all kinds of driving conditions
th the X1
by controlling each wheel individually
to simulate a change in friction between the tire and the road.
The rear wheels actually steer out,
causing the car to go into a spin,
and we watch the reaction of the driver to correct that.
All right, so you're going to take us for a ride?
No, David, we'd really like to get your data.
So we'd like to wire you up and have you drive the car.
Oh, so the test subject is me.
Shocker!
I'm going to put some EEG recording electrodes
on your scalp so we can check out your brain activity
as you drive X1 around the skid pad.
I don't know,
I think my brain activity might blow out your equipment.
These electrodes won't reveal what I'm thinking,
but they'll record patterns in my brain activity:
an indication of how hard my brain is working.
"I'll be back."
And now I meet my co-pilot.
I'll be messing with you a little bit.
I designed the experiment that we're going to be doing.
And while we're driving,
I'll be collecting your data here on this computer.
Are we ready?
Whenever she wants,
Holly can take control of any of the four wheels.
Any moment now, she'll make the X1 behave
as though we've hit a patch of ice.
The squealing is okay?
Not bad!
This is where Holly triggered the rear wheels
to go through a very sharp angle change,
to make you feel like you're starting to spin out.
There's an abrupt change in my brainwaves,
suggesting I've become super-focused
on controlling the car:
so focused that if this were a real-life situation,
I might not notice something as obvious as an oncoming bus.
This data could lead to cars that know just when to step in
to bail human drivers out of hairy situations.
Which reminds me:
I have one final question about self-driving Shelley.
How does she stack up against a real pro?
Let's find out.
David Vodden has 50 years of experience
and knows this track inside and out.
But to set a high benchmark, I'm going to take the first lap.
Here we go!
Good exit, good line.
C'mon!
Give me some horses!
Two minutes, 51 seconds.
You've set the mark for this race,
and we'll see how the others do.
Woo-hoo! 2:51!
I'd like to see a piece of software beat that!
The time to beat is 2:51, old man.
Old man?!
A professional driver relies on experience, intuition
and the feel of the road.
He's always thinking ahead.
This is the warm-up lap.
This is his warm-up lap?!
He pushes the car to its limits and smoothly reins it back in.
2:19.3.
2:19?
He's a little bit faster, by more than 30 seconds.
Well, you're using a phone instead of a real clock,
that's why!
Start the model.
Now Shelley's handlers prep her for the big moment.
You are now able to exit the vehicle.
Unmanned vehicle on the track!
Shelley makes 200 calculations a second
to determine her correct speed and brake-point
based on the available friction.
Robotic ghost-driven vehicle!
When our cars are this smart, we'll be a lot safer.
So who won, man or machine?
In third place, with a time of 2:51,
David Pogue.
In second place, with a time of 2:21, Shelley.
And today's winner, with 2:19, David Vodden.
Today, man beat machine by just two seconds.
But Chris is confident that Shelley will beat
even the best of us someday soon
and make the cars we drive much safer.
That is, if we manage to hang onto our spot
behind the wheel at all.
It may seem like the stuff of a science fiction movie...
How can I be of service?
Just tell your car where you want to go
and let it do the driving.
But that day may not be far off.
Google already has a fleet of self-driving cars
that have logged several hundred thousand miles
on surface streets and freeways.
They're already officially street-legal
in California, Nevada and Florida.
Someday, robotic cars
may virtually eliminate traffic accidents.
But for now, driving is an unavoidable risk
that most of us accept,
even though some 35,000 people a year
will die on the road in the United States.
Flying is much safer.
Too bad we have to put up with what happens before takeoff.
The frequent flier in me wants to know:
isn't there a better way to combat the risk of terrorism
that's quicker and less intrusive?
Now, the Department of Defense is funding a promising
and unusual new explosives detection system.
It's the brainchild of Professor June Medford
at Colorado State University.
They actually don't need wires, they don't need batteries,
and they don't need electricity.
And we'll take you down to the deep part of the basement
to see them.
This must be some serious ultra-top-secret tech!
All right, ready?
Here they are!
What, behind the salad bar?
No, these are our bomb detectors.
The plants.
Come on, it's a salad green!
It can't move, it can't talk,
it can't touch anything or smell anything.
But it's got to breathe, just like you and I.
And like us, plants can sense all sorts of things
in their environment:
light and moisture, temperature and touch,
and chemicals like nitrogen or phosphorous.
They have ways to sense
and respond to their environment continuously,
365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
Yeah, but they're slow.
They're not slow.
Take for instance the Venus fly trap.
It's fast enough it can catch a fly.
Whoa.
Okay, that was fast.
June's plants can't catch flies,
but they can detect traces of chemical explosivesoscos
on the surface of their leaves, stems and roots.
If I could get in there with a microscope,
what would these receptors look like?
Are they little Velcro or hands or...?
They're little proteins.
We actually have a model of what one would look like,
like right here.
Receptors are proteins that are shaped to bind,
like a lock and key, to specific chemicals found in nature.
But amazingly, some receptors on June's plants
can latch on to man-made compounds.
This is a particle of...
Of bomb stuff.
And it's wafting through the air.
It's wafting through the air,
and you can't hide, and it comes in and binds this.
You've engineered this protein,
this receptor, on this plant
to look for something new, a bomb material or explosive,
that nature didn't breed.
Absolutely.
Are you genetically modifying that plant?
Yes, we are.
June works with a group
at the University of Washington
that custom-designs new proteins.
They tailor-made a plant receptor
that binds to compounds in explosives.
Then they came up with the sequence of DNA...
The gene... that tells the plants to grow this receptor.
And how does June get that DNA into her plants?
It's as easy as taking a bath.
If you wanted to put a new gene in a plant,
all you have to do is take your plants,
turn them upside down in a solution,
and give them a gentle swirl.
What?!
Maybe some music.
Come on, that's like a B-movie version
of genetic modification.
What about the injector, syringe and the microscope?
It's this?
This solution contains bacteria that naturally infect plants.
June inserted the new gene into the bacteria.
Now she leaves it up to them to do the dirty work
of transferring the gene into the plant's DNA.
That can't work.
Yes, it can.
That's like a kindergartener's science project.
Here, you do it, David.
Just by swishing it around upside down?
Indeed.
Think about plant sex.
Slow, slow.
There you go, you got it in.
All right, I've done it.
So this plant can sniff bombs now?
The seed from that plant can sniff bombs.
So this was the plant's sex, and the offspring...
The offspring will sniff bombs.
Will have the super power.
Yep.
The swirled plants eventually flower
and produce seeds that June grows in Petrie dishes.
These tiny plants are bomb detectors,
but how exactly can they tell us there's a bomb nearby?
It's not like they can wag their tails and bark.
When molecules of explosives
bind to the engineered receptors on the surface of the plant,
they trigger a powerful response.
And what exactly happened here?
Well, they detected a substance.
It activated a histidine kinase signal transduction pathway
that sent a high-energy phosphate bond
from a histidine to an aspartate,
leading to a conformational change in the protein,
activating our degreening circuit,
leading to a loss of chlorophyll.
What does that mean?
The plants turned white.
For now, it takes 48 hours
for the plants' leaves to lose all their chlorophyll:
the pigment that makes them green.
June tracks the progress with time-lapse cameras.
But she's working on reducing that time to just seconds,
fast as a Venus flytrap.
So someday, this could be the front yard at the airport.
That's right.
This is the entrance to the airport.
Or a shopping center or a theater.
Entrances to any area,
including the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
The only problem is, what happens if somebody
just happens to have planted white flowers?
Wouldn't everyone be like, "Ahh! Bombs!"
The leaves are still green, David.
Oh, it's the leaves that change color.
Got that.
June has harnessed the incredible machinery of nature
to create bomb detectors powered by water and sunshine.
And now there's another new technology
that may protect us against even scarier weapons,
like a dirty bomb or an actual nuke.
Every year, about 16 million cargo containers
arrive at American ports.
The worry is that any one of them
might contain dangerous radioactive contraband.
Customs officials can scan only a small percentage of them.
Like giant Geiger counters, radiation portal monitors
can detect the gamma rays emitted by uranium, plutonium
and other nuclear materials.
But not all our ports are equipped with this gear.
And besides, those detectors can easily be fooled.
X-rays can spot nuclear materials,
but they can be harmful to living things,
like port officials.
What if there were a harmless way
to see inside every container?
It would be like having super powers.
At the Southern California offices of Decision Sciences,
Michael Sossong is working on just such a system.
But before he shows me how it works,
he's going to demonstrate the shortcomings
of standard radiation detectors.
He has me wield a Geiger counter.
The nuclear materials that we're looking for
are not the only radioactive things out there.
There's a lot of other things that are putting off radiation
that we use in our daily lives.
Really? Like...?
Like bananas.
Bananas?
Mike tells me that bananas actually contain potassium 40,
a radioactive isotope.
But way too little to hurt us.
Still, containers of bananas have set off alarms.
So the port inspectors,
they'd be looking at their monitors
and they'd be like,
"Whoa, there's something radioactive in there.
Freak out, everybody!"
And then they're like, "Oh, it's just bananas."
Right.
Water-softener salt
contains even more of that potassium.
And some ceramics get their bright colors
from radioactive glazes.
And that's a serious problem
with the detectors that we have out there now
is that they're getting hundreds of false positives
at a busy port a day.
It can take hours to hand-inspect shipments
to confirm a false positive.
And that's time port officials could use
to detect real threats.
But there's an even more chilling problem.
We actually call this
the type of arrangement that a terrorist might use
trying to smuggle these materials.
It's just three layers of lead inside a steel-lined milk crate.
And this is a cube of uranium.
This is depleted uranium,
not the kind used in bombs.
But it's still radioactive enough
that I need to wear gloves to handle it.
Oh, man, it's very heavy!
Nuclear materials are dense.
This cube weighs nearly 50 pounds.
I'm all set.
All right.
One cube of terror
and no radiation to give it away.
You could now drive this past any passive radiation detector
and they wouldn't detect it.
Frank!
It's just milk!
Don't worry about it!
But now there may be a way to peer into the cube.
It's a technology based on something from outer space:
cosmic rays.
When these high-energy particles hit Earth's atmosphere,
they create subatomic particles called muons.
Traveling at nearly the speed of light,
muons rain down on our planet all the time
and zip through just about anything in their way,
including you, me and shipping containers.
This contraption may look like
nothing more than a huge metal frame,
but it can detect those muons.
You know, it looks like it's nothing
but a bunch of aluminum pipes.
You're right, it's just aluminum tubes.
There's nothing very exotic
in terms of the physical machine.
There's a lot of software,
a lot of complexity in the software.
More than 4,000 aluminum tubes make up this lower detector,
and 4,000 more form the upper detector.
Each tube has an electrically charged wire running through it.
When a muon passes through the tube,
the wire sends a signal to a bank of computers.
The upper detector records the path of each muon
as it enters the scanner.
As the muon penetrates the container and its contents,
these solid objects change its trajectory a bit.
The denser the material, the greater the change.
When the muon hits the lower detector,
the system records how much the muon's path has changed
and calculates the density of every object in the container.
But can it look through lead and spot a hidden block of uranium?
This I've got to see.
Nice little spot for it.
Michael helps me hide my evil milk crate
in a shipment of innocent goods.
So here's where the magic happens, huh?
As thousands of muons stream through the detector,
the computer builds up an image
of the container and its contents.
You can already see, there's the pallets.
You can see the corner posts of the containers.
We get a full 3D picture of what's in the container,
and that's critical because it helps to address this issue
of hiding things behind other, more dense objects.
Materials used in nuclear weapons
are among the densest on earth.
Within seconds, the uranium shows up.
This isn't just a load of paper and kitty litter.
There's something high-density in there.
And you can actually see the nice red arrow.
That's amazing.
Even though I put that uranium
in three half-inch thick layers of lead
and inside the steel of a container,
like Superman with X-ray vision, you are seeing that block.
It's actually better than X-ray vision.
It's muon-vision.
For a next step, a full-scale scanner
is being tested at Freeport, in the Bahamas.
If it pays off, this technology may help
protect our ports against nuclear threats.
But even the best border security won't protect us
from what Mother Nature routinely throws our way.
Oh, my God!
Of all our planet's upheavals,
earthquakes are among the most terrifying.
We can't predict them and we sure can't stop them,
but increasingly, engineers are learning
how to protect against their awesome power.
That's good news, because one of my favorite cities
is also one of our most vulnerable: San Francisco.
I'd always thought these skyscrapers
would be the hardest hit in a big quake.
But in fact, the taller the building,
the more flexible it is.
Skyscrapers can sway without falling over.
What we need to worry about are thousands of buildings
that went up before the 1970s.
They're called "soft story" buildings
because their ground floor is an open space,
usually a garage, with large doorways.
In an earthquake, that structurally "soft" story
can't support the motion of the upper floors,
and it collapses.
In 1989, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake
damaged hundreds of these structures in the Bay Area
and left thousands homeless.
Today, throughout California's seismic zones,
some 200,000 to 300,000 people still live in these death traps.
They're sitting ducks.
The risk is so high that cities across the state
are writing laws requiring that these structures be retrofitted.
But how can engineers figure out exactly what will work?
Well, for starters, a five-university team
built a replica of a soft story building from the 1920s.
But they couldn't just sit around
and wait for the earth to move.
They staged their own earthquake.
Three, two, one...
Then they followed that with a devastating aftershock
that brought this building to its knees.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves,
because before they flattened it,
engineers spent a month testing ways
to keep the structure standing.
It's built on the largest
outdoor shake table in the world,
at the University of California, San Diego.
Powered by massive hydraulic pistons,
this 172-ton brute can simulate
the most devastating earthquakes ever recorded.
It can also make a mean milkshake.
Seriously, for team leader John van de Lindt,
this is the project of a lifetime.
This is the first time a building this size
that represents a true soft story building has been tested.
His team will test four engineering solutions
that performed well in computer models.
We're looking at design and retrofit methods
to try and make these structures safer
for the many, many families around the United States
that live in them.
The first retrofit involves
panels of a new building material
called "cross laminated timber," or CLT.
CLT is made of lumber stacked at right angles and glued together,
which makes for panels that are very strong and stiff.
Two sets of panels are placed on the garage floor
and anchored to the ceiling.
During an earthquake, they should rock in place
and help absorb energy from the motion of the upper stories.
But the CLT panels aren't bearing the burden alone.
They're attached to steel rods
that run straight down into the foundation.
The steel rods, they have to transfer forces
from the cross-laminated timber while it rocks,
and this will dissipate the energy from the earthquake.
Before the test, they fully wire
30 cameras and 300 sensors
to measure the movement and behavior
of each part of the building.
Now it's time to rock and roll.
Loma Prieta, in ten, nine...
This will be a simulation of the 1989 earthquake
that took 63 lives and destroyed countless structures.
But with its retrofit in place, this building's ready to rumble.
Can just a few wooden panels really prevent collapse?
The original earthquake lasted about 15 seconds.
That may not sound like a long time,
but if you happen to be inside a building
that's about to collapse, it must feel like an eternity.
Cameras reveal the CLT panels rocking in place.
Stop camera.
At last, the test is over.
They head inside and look for damage.
Isn't that interesting?
So this one yielded...
It's clear that the panels saved the day,
but the rocking motion put so much stress on the steel rods
that they actually stretched.
This test was absolutely perfect, I'd say phenomenal.
If this wasn't here, the building would have collapsed.
The researchers document every crack and break.
Some repairs would be needed,
but the building would still be livable.
CLT panels are the simplest of the retrofits they'll test.
Steel frames strengthened the openings on the ground floor
and performed even better than the CLT panels,
allowing minimal damage to the building.
When engineers added plywood reinforcement
on the upper floors,
the steel frames kept the structure virtually intact.
Same goes for the fourth retrofit...
High-tech dampers that acted like shock absorbers
on the bottom floor and kept the building standing.
All in all, four for four.
We've tested four retrofits to this point.
They've done exactly what we wanted them to,
sometimes even performed a little bit better than expected.
All of these retrofits are a viable option.
That's great, but what would be the point of building
a four-story structure on a shake table
and then letting it stand?
So now, with all the retrofitting removed,
there's one last test to run.
Engineers have modeled this one in the computer,
but they've never actually seen a soft story building collapse.
Until today.
So the two safe areas, it's back behind the red tape there,
and then you can walk around the building
and you'll see red tape over here.
For earthquake engineers, this is an epic event.
They start out with a few gentle shakes.
Then they gun it,
hitting it with an equivalent of a 6.7 magnitude shake.
They watch as the second floor juts out over the garage level
by nearly a foot and a half.
The engineers are shocked to see that it's still upright.
Wow, so 17% drift and it's standing.
I guess that answers our question
on how much drift these can take.
What will it take to bring this baby down?
They hit it once again, with a large aftershock.
100% MCE level in three, two, one... running.
Wow.
Unreal.
Wow.
That made my day.
I don't think I've seen something like that.
The building they worked so hard to protect
is just a pile of lumber, beyond repair.
I do have a soft spot in my heart for the building.
But I know what we've done will provide engineering and science
what they need to make these types of dangerous buildings
much safer for the families that live in them.
Let's hope Californians apply those retrofitting techniques
before the Big One hits.
Luckily, most of us don't live in earthquake country.
But none of our homes are beyond the reach
of a far more common threat...
Oh... fire! Fire! Fire!
Over the past century, death rates from fires
have dropped 90% in the United States,
mostly thanks to smoke detectors, fireproof materials
and fire codes.
Still, nearly 3,000 people die in residential fires each year.
And now the risk of wildfires seems to be on the rise,
most likely due to higher temperatures and droughts
brought on by climate change.
We have foams and chemical retardants to knock down flames
and slow the spread of fire,
but many of these products are toxic to plants and animals.
Short of installing sprinkler systems
throughout the wilderness, can't we find a better way
to combat fires?
I've come to the headquarters of EarthClean in Minnesota
to find out.
Rumor on the street is
you've come up with something better than water
for putting out a fire.
This is going to put the fire out faster
than anything you've seen before.
Vanilla pudding?
This goop is called TetraKO
and it's different from plain old water in an important way.
The unique thing about it
is it actually adheres to where it's sprayed.
You can spray it on a ceiling, you can spray it on a wall,
and it would actually stick and stay there.
So the firefighter, if it were water,
would have to stand there hosing, hosing, hosing,
but now can just spray the goop
and then move on to the next wall.
Exactly.
But won't this gel just melt away in a fire?
I'll show you that the stick does actually burn.
Apparently this stuff can also keep things
from going up in flames.
What's in there exactly?
Well, our main ingredient is cornstarch.
Cornstarch?
If you'd like to try it, you can.
Oh, come on, what are you...!
It's all natural.
You can eat it.
So how does cornstarch stop fire?
You've all made gravy.
So here's my cornstarch, and...
Just add a little water, apply some heat,
and that simple white powder becomes white goo.
This will thicken up as soon as it gets hot.
Cornstarch consists of long chains of glucose,
a form of sugar,
tightly packed into tiny granules.
When mixed in water and heated, those chains separate.
They swell and create a netlike structure
that makes the mixture thicker.
That's why we use cornstarch to thicken gravy.
And that's why this stuff sticks to walls in a fire,
instead of melting.
So, next time I'm making Thanksgiving dinner
and it bursts into flame, as typically happens with me,
what should I grab to throw on it?
A bucket of water, or the pot of gravy?
Pot of gravy.
The gel also contains polymers... Long molecular chains...
Dissolved in water,
which give it the special properties
of a non-Newtonian fluid.
Most fluids are just plain Newtonian.
Water is the classic example.
Stir it, whisk it, shake it as much as you want
and it doesn't change its thickness.
Juice, honey and most oils are also Newtonian fluids.
But non-Newtonian fluids change when you apply force to them.
The best-known non-Newtonian fluid is ketchup.
And ketchup has this property
when it's not being squeezed, it's a solid.
But if you shake it up and it starts to move around,
it liquefies.
So this is facial cleanser.
It's a gel, but it's pretty solid.
It is solid.
The bubbles are frozen in space.
And yet, through the miracle of non-Newtonian fluid,
it what, turns into a liquid.
Exactly.
This is also a solid.
This is hair styling gel.
And then if we pump it, it liquefies.
It turns into a mist!
Right.
The non-Newtonian fire-fighting gel
also has a split personality.
So the TetraKO is a gel
when it's in the fire truck,
and then you're spraying it, it comes out of the nozzle,
it instantly turns into a liquid, so it can spray,
then it lands on the wall and then what?
Turns back to a solid.
Oh, my gosh!
But fire on a little paint stick is one thing.
Let's see how the cornstarch does at putting out a real fire,
like my little fake apartment here.
The Fire Department of White Bear Lake, Minnesota,
helps us stage a test.
The gel hits the burning surfaces and sticks,
smothering the flames.
The cornstarch thickens the gel and releases clouds of steam.
Wow.
About two seconds that thing was out, and I mean completely out.
Local fire departments are using this new firefighting gel
in the field.
And though it costs more than just spraying water,
some think it's worth it.
Chief Zikmund, can I talk to you a sec?
You bet, glad to.
Have a seat. Thanks, I'll pass.
You've used this in real fires,
out in the world?
Out in our community we've had it on a half dozen fires.
The crew would just hit it from the doorway,
and the fire's out, and it stays out.
This is some of the best technology
I've seen come along in years.
TetraKO is in beta-testing for use in wildfires.
It can be sprayed on vegetation and buildings
in the path of an approaching fire up to a day in advance.
And it's nontoxic...
Safe for the environment, wildlife and us.
We've made great strides in protecting ourselves from fires.
But what about protecting ourselves from the fires
that flare up in our bodies?
I'm talking about infectious diseases.
Vaccines are one of our greatest weapons
against these deadly enemies.
They've saved millions from polio, smallpox, measles,
whooping cough and dozens of other illnesses.
But delivering vaccines can be a challenge.
Many need to be kept cold,
and sometimes that's nearly impossible.
And most require an injection.
Where medical supplies are lacking,
needles are sometimes reused, which can spread disease.
Millions of people are not getting
the vaccinations they need.
But I hear there's a team at MIT
working to overcome these obstacles.
Scientist Pete DeMuth is developing a vaccine patch
smaller than a dime.
So what does this patch look like?
It exists? Yeah, it exists.
You can take a look at a couple right here.
You can see this pattern of very small, microscopic needles
on the surface of the patch.
These needles are actually on the order
of half a millimeter or less in length.
They're, like... this long.
Exactly.
And how many are there?
So this patch actually has about 100 needles,
but patches are made
where there can be even thousands of needles.
Looks harmless until you see it under the microscope.
All right, and we'll bring this into focus.
Whoa!
Evil!
Looks like a medieval torture device.
The next step is to coat these needles
with fine layers, or films, that contain the vaccine.
But how do you layer anything on something this small?
You've got to know how to work at the nano-scale...
Down at the molecular level... Like Professor Paula Hammond.
This is actually where we build the films
that contain our vaccine.
How are you doing?
Nice to meet you.
Yes, yes, we love our friend here.
This is it, huh?
This is it.
A robotic arm dips the microneedle patch
into trays containing the vaccine's components.
You sort of co-opted the ancient principle of chocolate fondue.
The way that we make the coating is that we take the components
that make up our vaccine.
One of the components is negatively charged,
and the other component is positively charged.
The microneedle patch is negatively charged.
First it's dipped in a positively charged component
and a microscopic layer forms.
Then it's dipped in a negatively charged component
and a new layer forms.
In this way, dozens of layers can be built up
on the microneedles
and then embedded in the skin, like a tattoo.
Over days or weeks, they dissolve
and release the vaccine.
But what are these components?
The positively charged ones are biodegradable polymers...
In this case, plastics.
And the negatively charged ones are DNA.
So there's a polymer, and there's DNA...
That's right.
...which is genetic material.
I thought you said it's a vaccine.
Actually, DNA in our case is the vaccine,
which is very unique but also very powerful.
Most vaccines are created from weakened or killed microbes,
or from parts of microbes.
The immune system mounts an attack,
even though there's no real threat.
Some immune cells remember the episode.
Should they ever encounter the actual microbe,
they'll spring into action and destroy the invader.
A DNA vaccine doesn't deliver any bits of microbe.
It delivers a stretch of DNA
that contains a gene for a bit of microbe... a protein.
This gene inserts itself into our DNA.
Now our own cells produce proteins
that trigger an immune response.
And the DNA requires no refrigeration.
Okay, David, are you ready?
Dude!
In what universe is that a microneedle?
We don't have to deal with this old technology anymore.
Oh, that's the before and this is the after.
That was before, yeah.
You guys are just a laugh riot.
And I'm just going to apply this to your wrist.
So this is human trials starting right now.
Well, let's see how it goes.
All right, and we're going to place this right here.
It doesn't hurt at all.
Just a little pressure.
You're holding up a plastic game piece to my skin.
It's really nice because these microneedles are too short
to actually reach the nerve endings in your skin.
And this particular one,
what nasty DNA is it injecting into my body?
We didn't put anything on yours.
This is just a blank to give you an idea
of what the experience will be like.
Wow.
I don't see blood,
I don't see shredded flesh, just that little ring.
That's right, exactly.
So not only does this eliminate the problem
of keeping the vaccine cold, all the way from the manufacturer...
not only does it solve the problem
of needles being reused or misused,
but it also doesn't hurt, which you could argue
is an advantage over huge nasty pieces of metal.
It's a huge advantage.
No more crying children.
You have happy parents as well.
Although the one downside, I'd have to say,
is that you don't get the little lollipop at the end
for your suffering.
We would like to give you a little lollipop.
Aren't you sweet!
For being such a great sport.
It's a polymer!
This radical new vaccine system is still in the testing phase.
If it lives up to its promise,
it could eventually save millions of lives
around the world.
In our pursuit of safety, we've pushed the limits of science
and technology, and come up with amazing innovations.
And yet, we keep on doing dangerous things,
sometimes just for the thrill of it.
Hey, I've even pulled a few crazy stunts
in the name of science.
But sometimes we're just not aware of the real risk.
Take football.
It's more than a sport.
It's a part of American culture
and a passion for millions of fans.
Part of its appeal is that it's a serious contact sport.
But over the past decade, there's been a spate of stories
about veteran football players succumbing to depression
and dementia.
And several top players have committed suicide.
Autopsies of their brains revealed
that an abnormal protein had destroyed cells
in areas that regulate impulse control, judgment and memory.
The condition appeared to be caused
by a history of multiple concussions.
A concussion occurs when a violent blow to the head
or sudden acceleration... Like whiplash...
Forcefully jars or shakes the brain.
Symptoms can include an inability to think clearly,
blurry vision and dizziness.
But scientists still don't understand exactly what happens
to the brain in a concussion.
Four years ago, neuroimaging specialist Tom Talavage
and his colleagues at the Purdue Neurotrauma Group
began tracking football players at local high schools,
because professional players are not the only ones
whose brains take a beating.
I had two concussions...
One in eighth grade and one in sophomore year.
I just felt real dizzy, I felt sick to my stomach.
I didn't think anything of it and I went back in and played.
The research team wired the players' helmets.
This is our sensor package
and it fits in between the padding in this space here.
These accelerometers record the intensity and location
of each hit, as well as the motion of the player's head.
A wireless connection sends information to the researchers
in real time.
I wonder if this is contact with the forehead
and then sliding, hitting the shoulder pads.
Later, the data is translated into a plot.
You can imagine unzipping the helmet in the back
and pulling it open and flattening it out.
Blue dots represent small hits.
Yellow and red dots represent big hits.
Before the season began,
the researchers compiled a baseline cognitive score
for each player, measuring things like attention span,
reaction time and problem solving.
And a functional MRI scan measured brain activity
while the player performed another set of tests.
The plan was to run the same battery of tests
each time a player sustained a concussion.
Unsteady? Dizzy?
Feel sick to your stomach?
After two weeks of practice and two weeks of games,
the players had sustained plenty of hits.
But no one suffered a concussion.
Everything looks good.
So the researchers retested
several players anyway,
expecting little to no change from their baselines.
The results stunned them.
This was a player who was never diagnosed
with any sort of concussion.
There's no reason that an athletic trainer or a coach
or any other player would have ever recommended he be examined.
Yet his MRI showed his brain working much harder
on the same tests he'd aced four weeks earlier.
He also showed cognitive deficits,
especially in his visual memory.
No concussion,
but he had sustained several hundred hits to the head.
This looks like a player who's getting their head down,
charging into the line, and takes a hit every single play.
Those hits produced the kind of impairment
the research team had assumed
would be caused only by concussions.
And this was just one player of several
with the same impairment.
12 weeks after the season ended, the players were tested again.
Their scores returned to normal,
but the surprising earlier results forced the scientists
to rethink assumptions about head injuries.
What we're only starting now to understand
is that the players who are getting hit a lot
are actually ending up just as, if not more impaired
as the players who get concussions.
Some three million kids under the age of 18 play football
in the United States.
Could repeated blows to the head,
even ones that don't qualify as concussions,
affect their academic performance?
And just how great is the risk of permanent damage
for these kids and kids playing other contact sports?
These are young kids.
Their brains are still developing.
If we are causing some low level of damage,
the body is going to be spending time repairing those injuries.
So as these kids are playing more and more football,
are we going to find
that their brains are becoming less and less normal?
Tom and his colleagues hope their research
will answer that question.
In the meantime, what can we do to make young athletes safer?
If we can't get them to give up football for basket-weaving,
can we at least build a better helmet?
Traditionally, football helmets have been designed
to prevent skull fractures, and they do that remarkably well.
But how can we protect the brain inside the skull
during head-on collisions and other blows?
Every hit, whether it's from the side or the front or the top,
it's also going to cause the head to rotate,
either back and forth or side to side
or even in this twisting motion, or some combination of those.
These rotational forces
can be just as devastating as the direct hit.
So Eric Nauman is developing a next-generation helmet
based on a double shell design.
Separated by a layer of foam,
the two shells move independently.
In an impact, the outer shell should absorb
some of the rotational force before it reaches the brain.
It will take years of testing
to reveal whether this new helmet
can actually protect young brains during routine play.
The message about head injuries and brain damage
is also reaching the playing field.
Keep your head up, keep your head up!
Some coaches have begun to emphasize
proper tackling techniques,
where players lead with the shoulders
and get their heads out of the way.
We certainly see that players who take fewer hits to the head
or fewer large hits to the head
tend to show fewer changes in their neurocognitive testing,
in their neuroimaging.
With better monitoring, better equipment and better technique,
we're here to make the game safer.
When it comes to safety,
most of us think children first and foremost.
They're our future.
Who could blame us for trying to protect them from every peril?
Young man, do you have a permit?
Can I see that seatbelt, sir?
If we could, we'd probably dress them in bubble wrap
and child-proof the entire world.
But I wonder: is there such a thing as too safe?
That's a dangerous piece of equipment!
Don't we all need to test our physical limits?
Isn't that how we gain the confidence we need to explore,
to invent
and create the innovations that improve our world?
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
This is fast!
And dangerous.
Maybe the key to living well is finding the sweet spot
between an acceptable level of risk
and making stuff... safer!
Whoo!
On This NOVA program iscan available on DVD and Blu-ray.
To order, visit shopPBS.org, or call 1-800-play-PBS.
NOVA is also available for download on iTunes.
Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org