Oldmixon , and lindsay moran, plastic that can stop a bullet, why is it ending up in some classrooms . Im phil torres, im an entomologist. I study spiders in the rain forests of peru. Thats our team, now lets do some science. Hi and welcome to techknow. Im phil torres, im here with kosta, rachelle and lindsay. You looked at 3d printing. 3d printing is an industry thats blowing up right now. We explored and visited all these different groups and laboratories, that are doing 3d printing. Lets take a deep dive. From trinkets and 96 inaction, 3d fashion and and from auto makers prototyping new parts to nasa lamping a 3d printer to replace parts. Space exploration, this is absolutely a critical technology. From diy medical solutions. Weve seen the people who made the robo hand project. To life altering research. Im dr. Ben asser. Our lab makes ears. Its alive whit goes into the printer and comes out of the printer. Each is prototighting 3d printers arent anything like your home printer. 3 printing is a process that makes physical objects. A 3d print er gradually layer by layer. Not a picture of a cup of coffee but the coffee itself. He is a printing pioneer. Every design file tells what the printer, where to put the material. What you see here is the printed speaker. In any Design Software you can go ahead and make changes. That information has been sent to the printer that prince layer after layer, hour after hour. What do we have here . We have here is the first entirely 100 3d printed consumer electronic device. Its a loud speaker. Why is this a big innovation . We have begun the second chapter, from passive parts to integrated systems. That can act, react. We created our first Innovation Institute in youngstown, ohio. Earned a shout out from the president. That has the potential to revolutionize how we make almost anything. Across the cornel l campus. Heart valves are pretty complex shapes, and if we use 3d printing we can duplicate that shape. Researcher Laura Hockaday is working on stem cells. You could fabricate a living heart valve that would then be used as the prosthetic. Just 3print a valve with using the patients own stem cells. Put it in and it will grow with them. Yes, thats the idea. If it works it will be life changing for boys like nineyearold max page. Hes that cute pint sized darth vader from the supercommercial from volkswagen. We noticed max was in trouble when i went in for my 38week appointment. They took him by c section. Max had a heart valve operation in 2012. Is not adequate for an active seven and a half year old boy. For max the valve wont grow with him. When he gets to be late teen hell need a valve to match that size body and when hes a full adult hell need the valve to match that body. So the work at cornell is very specific. It makes me feel good to know that we have somebody on our side. We talked to somebody whose child currently suffers from this condition. Theyre so excited about the work youre doing. Wow, these technologies are so close to a break through. Its for us our future our reality. And its not just dreaming about kids that might be born today. Its this kid right here. From the beginning of the personal computer revolution, the world wasnt quite sure what a computer was good for besides counting and calculating missile trajectories. Its sort of where we are today, with 3d printing. Theres a great deal of potential as printers become easier to use. And this may be the epicenter of that change. Nicker bot. The idea that 3d printing is going to revolutionize our loams, that hasnt come to life quite yet. Happen. If you have a computer that you have at home you cant avoid having a 2d printer at home. Who would need those in the home, the same is going to happen with 3d printers. Across the country in los angeles, liz and cal von hasseim create in the sugar lab. It spreads a very fine layer of sugar. It paints with water, wherever that model exists at that crosssection and then it spreads another very fine layer of sugar and it paints the next Cross Section from the very bottom to the top layer until the whole model is built. And it is totally a magical process. Then comes the fun part. We calls call this the excavation station. Thats when we clean off all the sugar thats burying the model now. Thats like the mow delicious air ive ever breathed. Its like you annihilated some sections of it here. I know how to get rid of these damaged goods. Its delicious all right, kosta, what did 3d printing taste like . It tasted dry and sugary. But this is the most importantly, this is a 3d printed heart valve, children who have heart disease, 40 of them die. And this little guy is going ochange that about ten years away. Is this the scaffolding that the cells go on . Not even scaffolding. The cells are infused in it. Oh yeah. What are these things were looking at here . That is an architectural model that some architecture students created. I just cant believe the amount of detail that you see in this and the layers you see too. Even the detail inside. Its incredible and the colors and everything. Its so hard to believe that this is achievable now. This really seems a glimpse into our future and i really think this is going to become much more of our detail lives. Ra chel yoracial rachelle you did something different. Well be checking about that next. We want to hear what you think about these stories. Join the conversation, by theres no such thing as illegal immigration. Al Jazeera America presents. A Breakthrough Television event borderland a first hand view at the crisis on the border. How can i not be affected by it . Strangers, with different points of view take a closer look at the ongoing conflict alex, a liberal artist from new york and randy, a conservative vet from illinois. Are you telling me that its ok to just let them all run into the United States . You dont have a right to make judgements about it. They retrace the steps of myra, a woman desparately trying to reunite with her family. To discover, and one of their children perish in the process, i dont know how to deal with that. Will they come together in the face of tradgedy . Why her . Its insane. Experience illegal immigration up close, and personal. The only way to find out is to see it yourselves. On. Borderland only on al Jazeera America this is the real deal man. Hey guys welcome back. Now rachelle tell me, are oysters in trouble . They might be. Oysters are kind of the qua canary in the coal mine for the ocean. Theyre the reflection of the acidity that theyre in. There are some things that cosh changincouldbe changing the acie water theyre in. Why dont we go to hog island in california. Its not every day that you can tag along with a california oyster farmer. That Little Island is hog island. But its exhilarating. This is one of the ways we grow our baby oysters. The 15 mile long tomales bay is peppered with some of the most prolific oyster farms, including the Hog Island Oyster farm. The work is extremely demanding. How many oysters are in there . That pallet right there is probably 8,000 oysters. The payoff is delicious. Careyy why sawyer has been farming oysters for over 20 years. His Company Provides oysters to the restaurants in the San Francisco bay area. Everything these guys need to grow. As you can imagine, people love their oysters. So the industry has been doing very well since the 1970s. Unfortunately, in 2006, some problems began to emerge. What were seeing is all these larvae or the juvenile oysters, the entire populations are crashing, theyre dying. Its throorming say th loormingo alarming to say the least. They began honing in on the real cause. When you have the entire loss like that, that entire crash, that is ocean acid fictio ification that were talking about. Ocean acidification is happening at least ten times faster than we could see in the record. Ten times faster . Alarming i agree. He started working with professor testa hill and u. S. Daviss Marine Laboratory in bodega bay. About 30 what we put into the atmosphere just gets soaked like into that ocean. And that Carbon Dioxide changes the chemistry of the water. And thats what we called Ocean Acidification. As it moves from the air to the ocean it binds with water monthly cuns forming what we call carbonic acid, rapidly changing the chemistry and the chemical cal balance o balance. All of those use complements of sea water to build thier shell. And those Building Blocks are calcium and carbonate. All those animals who build shells to actually make their shells. Amazingly it could take up to three years for an oyster to use Calcium Carbonate to grow large enough for markets size. These are our smawls. Its a big enough oyster to put on the grill. The problem poses a serious threat for farmers who can no longer produce oysters whose shells develop. Using innovative sensor equipment and scientific tests, hills team has spent a year closely monitoring the actual chemical work in the bay. Were measuring the chemistry of the water, we are getting temperature, salinity, ph and oxygen every 30 minutes for the last month its been out and weve been doing this for a year straight now. Tafned to th attached to the bouy. ,. For a week or a month, a season, if a storm blows in. The reason why thats important is its hard to predict and understand what the impact of acidification will be, if we dont understand those little fluctuates. The research are team hopes to make this a long term exr set. The hope is a long term set so we have some way of tracking Ocean Acidification. Has it told us anything about the bay . Its told us a lot. Entire moralities, we hope to have different strategies. Like the famous mix cove. On a busy day we go through anywhere from 1600 to 2,000 which is a lot of shucking. Chef perkins has seen the shortage of oysters in california in the recent years. Thats troubling for multimillion dollar eateries, nation. Are you worried about your supply . Sure. Unless its controlled were not ever going to know until we dont have oysters anymore. The science has to be researched to see if were going to be the last generation thats going to have any oysters at all. Thats exactly what hill and her team are literally racing to find out. Even if it is just helping to solve one 15mile part of the scientific puzzle. And if there are a lot of ideas about how to protect small scale environments like what were looking at here, but those are pretty small pieces of the pie compared to the global issue of Ocean Acidification which can only be sofd. Rick solved solved through one emission of Carbon Dioxide. When people think of the impact of Greenhouse Gases were always focused on whats happening on our level above the earth. But in the water it really seems like its having a significant effect. The water is a sponge, especially for c 02 and it makes carbonic acid and that movement of the water isnt just affecting northern california. Its affecting oregon, Central Washington and the coast of california. So its a huge coastal are problem. Thank you, really fascinating stuff. Lindsay, what do you have for us . Well unfortunately we are going to explore School Shooting again. I explored technology for the world. This is what we do. Al Jazeera America. Hello and welcome back to techknow. Now School Shootings are unfortunately a reality that we have to live with. And lindsay you looked at some technology to try to make them a little less damaging. I went to the Eastern Shore from maryland where im from and looked at a Technology Originally developed for the military. We put this technology to a test. So lets have a look. As a former cia agent i learned how to shoot a variety of guns. So when techknow asked me to cover a story about the trend in but proof back to School Supplies it appealed to me both as a former operative and to my other side, as a plom. Mom. Back to School Shopping. Its always the most stressful time of year for parents like me who are not prepared, and now, weve got one more thing to worry about. Some parents are buying items like this insert intended to but proof backpacks to their back to School Shopping list. In the wake of the mass shooting at sandy hook last year that left 20 children dead, its no surprise that this year security is a big concern. I visited one Company Called hard wire, based in maryland which manufactures but proof school accessories. Where are we going now . Were going to go out on the factory floor and this factory was built right in the height of the iraq and afghanistan conflict. So it started as a vehicle armoring company. We moved into body armor and then after sandy hook we really took that same technology and applied it to school. Part of hard wires products are made from a synthetic fiber called dynema used in back packs and snow boards. You can see what its made of. Dont floss your teeth with this, guys. This is gorilla floss, for sure. The key is time, temperature and pressure. We found that with increasing pressure, Ballistic Properties went up. So the harder we could squeeze it, the more the ballistic are quality went up. Backpack inserts or white boards. Ive got to be honest though. Its so light, im having a hard time believing that this could withstand rapid fire weapons. That little piece of plastic thats less than a quarter inch thick has 400 layers in it. But youre talking about something that is eight, nine times lighter than steel with the same stopping power. But as they say, seeing is believing. We wengt to a firing range to test hard wires imr Bulletproof Backpack insert. Lets turn this into a ballistic backpack. Ear plugs in in. Clear. Definitely hit it. Thank you. Oops. Nothing penetrated the pack but you can see a couple holes down here writ hit. Some of the rounds were deflected down through the bottom. And the ones that didnt go through, there they are. These are still hot. Im going to go ahead and admit that i am pretty impressed by how the ballistic backpacks withstood some really powerful weaponry at the range. But its not just how well they can take the gun fire. There is also the question of whether or not teachers can really use these in the classroom. Dr. Barry toll is the head plaster at worchester preparatory. After sandy hook, hard wire are approached him with a proposal. He was going to offer ballistic backpacks for the staff. How did elizabeth find out about the armada . Spies. Do you think that the fact that this just looks like another classroom acu accouterment makes it less threatening . If it werent for the considered, this is a shield. Watching teach, seems like a security measure thats classroom. Could you demonstrate how you would use it . If i had to, i could use it like this, like a shield if i had to use it. Hopefully not. Rush at the intruder or just hold it up . I dont know. Im not sure what i would do. That just really seems controversial. Because we cant be asking our children to become heroes in the classroom. I totally agree. And im of two minds about the use of this technology in schools. On the one hand, i feel like any great. At the same time, i know my kids, and i know when they have that flight or fight, that the flee is going to kick in. Thats going to be their instinct. I am fine with that, i think thats the best thing to do. Especially when theres a effective. Thats right, no armor is completely impenetrable. We saw that there are certain types of weapons that this is not going to do anything to protect a child. I must say, it is sad that we have to protect our children with military hardware at this point. But hopefully it is part of the of of a of a multifaceted School Shootings that have taken place. Thanks everyone and well see you next week on techknow. Go behind the scenes at pldge al al jazeera. Hello, welcome to the news hour. Im in doha, our top stories. A young egyptian journalist is reportedly being shot dead as police clash with protesters in cairo. Plus. [ gunfire ] the taliban attacks a guest house in kabul. Ill here with the new