A danger for rubber plantations. And future farming robots and drones take to the fields. The Environmental Impact of cars is the subject of heated debate in europe and elsewhere. Everyone is talking about emissions. But lets talk about tires theyre forty percent rubber when theyre new. But then comes the daily road routine and thats where the problems start. Every time that rolls along a road get slowly but surely warm down. What happens to the particles of one off whether they end up. Our search for on says starts where the abrasion takes place. What are we looking at. Dust from tires from brake pads and from the roadway. Various materials come together here tire just falls into the category of fine sediment. You can barely see it its like fine particulates matter. That gets washed off the road and seeps into the ground all along the embankment physica. Rainwater deposits dust particles from roadways in the upper layer of soil that includes tire dust and all the smaller pollutant particles that stick to it. Eventually so much road dust accumulates that the rainwater no longer drains off. Hydraulic engineer cardiff and tar shows us how the highways agencies solve that problem they scrape off the surface soil every five to ten years that means more than two million tons of soil are removed each year in germany alone. Samples of the soil analyzed if its heavily contaminated it goes into a landfill but most of it winds up as filler for construction projects. Rainwater runoff along many of the busiest highways in germany is directed into special filtration plants car different of shows us a facility he helped to build. Model and other light fluid settle at the top thats why theres a baffled the rear of the water has to flow beneath it while it remains on the surface. Is in the tire just as in the fine sediment or the fine of the core sediment are held back here and some of the fine sediment does get through and reaches the soil filter base in l. The reeds bind any residual tire dust and other pollutants. Theres a fear that the shelter water comes out of the basin here and is then directed into the seepage reservoir where it can spread out over a wide area so that any residues that havent been captured and processed are retained here. So here it seems tire dust doesnt pose a danger for people or the environment. But then we meet researchers from the university of s. And we drive to another sedimentation basin one that looks more like a pond. Here to tire particles are meant to sink to the bottom as with the big highway purification plant but the waste water flows into a stream. The scientists want to find out if tiredest is a scaping the basin and flushed away so get hot chatting or takes a sample from the layers of sediment. He understands or is also investigating whether the animals that live here are affected by pollutants. Theres still no standard method for detecting tire dust. When there is tire dust theres always a raised level of zinc we measure the concentration of zinc in the sediment samples and the animals. That way we get an idea of whether tire dust has indeed ended up in this stream of. Tire dust doesnt only contain zinc but also heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Is all that found in the sediment or even in the little crustaceans living in the stream. Have you found evidence of tire dust. Our initial results show that zinc is present in varying concentrations we can see very clearly from our test results that the animals have indeed absorbed it. We see the corresponding concentrations of zinc and also of cadmium and lead we found all these elements in the animals. And the scientists from essen have tested hundreds of samples and found that tire dust can be found in streams fed from highway filtration facilities. In some places highway runoff isnt treated at all resulting in high levels of pollution. Thats not immediately fatal for some organisms such as roundworms but it can pose a threat to the fragile balance of the ecosystems of the affected bodies of water. Says more research is needed into tire dust since the problem isnt going to solve itself. Or. That many substances a broken down through micro biological activity by bacteria other organisms live off the earthworms and plants are also affected of course. The closer food crops are planted to rhode island. Greater the chance those elements will end up being absorbed by the fruits or vegetables that a plant of their. We know the tire dust can be transported over large distances but theres been Little Research into its effect once its washed into the sea either on the seabed or the water above it. It happens to all of them during its lifetime attire rolls over thousands of kilometers in all kinds of weather on all kinds of roads. The trip where stone then its time to get new tires. But what to do with the old ones. There are forty six million cars in germany and about twice as many people. So about half the population has a car on average car owners buy a new set of tires every four years and throw away the old ones. That works out of one used tire of her own and. The question is what should be done with all those tires. Dump them into the sea was the recommendation of United States scientists in the one nine hundred seventy s. They have the idea of creating an artificial reef in florida using two million used tires. Other countries followed their lead and spent lots of money building reefs of tires but they proved to be an ecological disaster hardly any plants or animals settled on the artificial reefs in currents and waves displaced countless tires many crashed into delicate corals and destroyed them. In two thousand and seven the u. S. Military started to clean up project to. Remove the failed fake florida reef me but about seven hundred thousand tires are still on the sea floor there any. So what else can you do with old tires what happens to them nowadays. They often wind up on the road again this time mixed into asphalt. First the tires are shredded. Into ever smaller pieces the rubber is separated from the metal and is then ground into granules. The crumbled rubber is mixed with regular us felt concrete to create noise reducing silent us felt. Shredded tires are also used to make running tracks and artificial grass. To dampen vibrations in electricity pylons and live on in various guises in washing machines and cars. As insulating mats theyre laid under flooring in houses. And offer cows a cushy place to rest. But one can go further and break tires down into real materials. The process is called pyrolysis scrap tires are roasted and broken down into carbon black char steel reveals an oil gas the technology is pretty new. The pyrolysis system will set you back at least twenty eight thousand dollars. But scrap tires dont have to be taken apart or turned to crumble to find a new purpose intact tires make great planters. Or weights to keep the cover on stores of animal feed. From those for boats. But in germany the majority of old tires wind up in cement factories where they burned in rotary furnaces to generate power used tires make good fuel releasing even more energy than coal so using old tires as fuel is still the best way to dispose of them. But were still waiting for the perfect recycling method. And where did all that rubber that goes into our tires come from in the first place. Cultural or Natural Rubber is the fluids known as latex it comes from rubber trees that are grown in huge plantations mainly in southeast asia. For example in thailand as demand for rubber rises the plantations are growing ever larger. A hilly region in southern thailand. Rubber plantations have long thrived down on the plains here but now theyre spreading out on to the slopes. As asias economies boom these natural forests are falling victim to the expansion. Here theyre harvesting a highly lucrative raw material latex used for rubber. Enormous demand means rubber farmers like mana in mar are making good money. But on his plantation he keeps coming across scenes of destruction trees trampled down or stripped of their bark guaranteeing their swift death. Munna in martinos whos eating the bark. My god something magic of developments often come into my plantation like when they keep me from working on my trees because elephants are very dangerous you know that and i have a lot more either when you come across them you have to stay really calm and slowly but smartly back away. Asias growing prosperity is generating an insatiable demand for tires each and every one of them made almost entirely from Natural Rubber but what effect does that have on the environment a question german agro ecologist Francisco Hari has set out to answer. She makes regular visits to the farmers here. The elephants look for food on the plantations because their forest habitat is shrinking. In their search for food and water they encroach on the rubber farms which upsets the farmers. With the funds that offend a huge amount when they need around one hundred fifty kilos a day and have to get that somehow or other that means especially when its dry and Forest Resources are depleted the Elephants Head straight for the plantation because they simply have to eat. And they leave serious damage in their wake. And one time an elephant came into a newly planted nursery and destroyed three hundred young trees in a single night in a fifth of my plantation on why. He farmers must wait until a rubber tree is at least seven years old before they can tap it. Tapping is a delicate business that requires a very soft touch at the top or cuts too deeply he damages the tree if the cut is too shallow the sap doesnt flow properly. I never used to earn much with rubber but now its profitable which is why i counted more when i took over from my father fifteen years ago we had five hundred trees and now we have three times as many. As one. Mana in my returns home with his latest harvest. The sap has dried into chunks that rubber producer middle men pay a good price for. To make their work easier plantation owners get rid of the vegetation surrounding the trees. Some and various use herbicides because they like to keep things tidy and at the same time it makes the rubber easier to cultivate so the farmers have to get in close to the trees to do their work and obviously the undergrowth gets in the way its easier without the undergrowth. But maintaining the undergrowth on the plantations would actually help defuse the situation with the invading elephants. Francisco harvey has noticed that the elephants arent especially keen on rubber. They leave the trees alone when they find Something Better in the undergrowth such as grass or bananas. And the giant animals rarely eat young trees when theyre out for aging they generally only trample them because theyre in the way. So Practical Solutions are necessary to keep them out of the nursery. As an affleck haha and in a fun and africa elephants are terrified of one aggressive the species once the farmers there use that knowledge to make socalled b. Fences that are connected with wires to the beehives they start to shake whenever the elephants try to get through more than that causes that these disparate mount and sting the elephants so the elephants learn to keep their distance from going up to them to. Rubber plantations have grown enormously in asia by sixty percent in the last fifteen years alone. And with no end in sight to the boom the plantations will continue expanding. And so will the search for solutions. We ask you on twitter and facebook who you think and saw the rubber problem scientists car makers. Says most wants to see biologists and chemists looking for alternatives. Well but hopi says that no one can solve the problem on their own he cites cash tag Plant Research which presents projects on alternative river sources like dandelions. Randolph x. Asks about progress in recycling and synthetic rubber. And nigel posts the suggestion that tire manufacturers could produce smaller car tires as a way of saving a lot of rubber. Now we move on to another natural substance thats making quite a splash among fans. Of urine Central America wants to know more about it. And when one does from san salvador wants to know. Why is that water inside a can canards. Getting into coconuts can be quite a challenge even for the most child of creatures. Its equally hard to crack one a coconut is classified as the stone fruit its structured like this. A tough outer skin gives way to a fibrous husk. Then you get to the nub which in case is the coconut embryo. The surrounding white coconut flash and the Coconut Water both nourish the embryo until it germinates. What one function of Coconut Water is to store nutrients a single fruit contains about a metre of water. Coconut water shouldnt be confused with coconut milk used in cooking thats made out of grated coconut flesh and regular water theres no Coconut Water in it. And finally the delicious fruit isnt just a thirst quencher coconut shells can be converted into charcoal briquettes they burn longer than regular charcoal and dont produce smoke and eco friendly alternative. If you have a science question go to our website and send it in if we answer it on the show youll get our d. V. D. Featuring a lighthearted look at some of albert einsteins most famous ideas the most important thing is to never stop asking questions. Robots are taking over the world of work. Theyre already building cars even houses. And theyre considered to be the future of nursing. Which sector will they take over next. This trone is inspecting a field of sugar beets. It works together with an agricultural robot down below in the field the eye on the arm you might say of the brain and the brawn. That a work of the flourish project which is developing autonomous intelligent precision farming systems. The trials are being conducted at a Research Facility of the. University. Frankly bush is one of the project managers. The system so reveals here ideally the system first finds its way from its shed to a certain field for fellow door and. Once its there it completes a predetermined task. Dont mean dealing with winds or applying fertilizer or the demand with from. Its team work. The drones job is to keep an eye on the sugar beets in the field with its High Resolution camera multispectral imaging cameras sensors and infrared sensors. The drone checks whether a crop is growing well throughout the field or if its patchy and whether weeds are popping up. It can also gather data on the condition of the individual plants. Using all that data the brains of the system sends the robot out to carry out tasks like precision weeding or fertilizing exactly where its needed and nowhere else. The robot is also equipped with cameras and sensors. Some of them help it to move about autonomous lee. Others allow it to measure the size color and shape of the plants its able to distinguish among them using a range of criteria. And the crop plants colored green in this image the weeds red. One method the robot uses to destroy weeds is very environmentally friendly it just stumps on the. River. The duo of drone and robot will work entirely autonomously when it comes to dispensing fertilizer it wont do it the conventional way back. Down to practice until now has looked like this theres a recommended amount of fertilizer per unit area and farmers apply it evenly across a field. But there are differences in soil composition and quality even with a small field they can vary a lot we can analyze the composition quite quickly and cheaply using Airborne Systems such as tiny helicopters and then the dosage can be adjusted meter by meter only applying as much as is really needed. So far the drone and robot have been programmed to work with sugar beets but they could be taught to deal with any crop data on the relevant parameters just have to be collected and integrated into the system. The flourish project is set to be completed by the end of twenty eighteen. Says the system could prove very useful where you might not expect it to. This is called an organic farming dealing with weeds is one of the most labor intensive activities. One pure light that will theres another organic farmers can only use mechanical methods or certain specific herbicides biden can make them silicone robots in a can distinguish between crops and weeds and work on them in distinct on precise ways could make a huge difference come on here i hit our allies throng from. Organic farming is not renowned for pioneering high tech but with flourish all that could change. For more from the world of science and technology go to our website and write us on twitter or facebook we love hearing from you. On our next show we head to New Caledonia in a cell for the civic to find some exotic plants that grow on toxic soil scientists are hoping to harness their remarkable powers join us then to find out more by. Im a mother like two billion other mothers around the world i have one wish the best for my child. But in this assigned seat in which breastfeeding is often frowned upon and its well for me that abound with profits is more important than my babys well being how do i know how to make the right decision. Mil. Teton. The fields all have finished. The british. Tour linked to news from africa and the world. Link to exceptional stories and discussions can you and will come student news actually program tonight from funny to me from the news of easy to i while with safety deputed called smashed. Effi come join us on facebook at d w africa. Every journey begins with the first step and every language of the first word in the nikko hes in germany to learn german. Physicist why not tell him. Its simple online on euro mile and for a. South. T. W. Zealand in course speak german made easy. Get starlight we get gamma ray bursts we get. There are extreme lee weak compared to the sunshine. So in a practical sense the sun is the only choice for Long Term Energy supply. Well clearly more scientific discoveries and more engineering are required to enable the the basic technologies to be cheap enough a lot of the Electrical Energy we produce is lost in the wire between the generator and the house so if we could make superconducting wires out that would be a wonderful way to transport energy from one place to another so lets make those investments now so that we all know things that we need to own when the time comes. This is news live from berlin a catastrophe in the making on the greek island of lesbos on this International Migrants day looks at the deteriorating conditions for Asylum Seekers there locals are raised as well and say it is only a matter of time before the city