She goes to the streets of seattle and santa cruz for a look at how science might stop crime before it happens. Lindsay is an excia operator. Tonight she shows us how mushrooms might one day replace styrofoam packages. Im phil torres and im an entomologist. I study insects in the rain forests of peru. Thats our team. Now, lets do some science. It has been another fantastic week of science on the road. Weve got crystal, lindsay and rita here. Were going to start with you. You were basically a very hightech firefighter for a week. Tell me about this. Thats right. I was on a story that followed how we use Unmanned Aircraft to fight the rim fire at yosemite. Let me show you. Here it is. Its a very unusuallooking piece of technology. It almost looks like an alien insect, and they have it in a hangar. Essentially they fly it up to yosemite, and its eyes in the sky following the rim fire and generating information for action on the ground. So lets check it out. The size and scope of the Massive Wildfire burning in Yosemite National park is staggering. At its peak 5100 firefighters were fighting a blaze larger than the city of chicago at a cost of nearly 100 million. The fire that is destroying hundreds of square miles of Wildlife Habitat and sensitive ecosystems, californias Third Largest fire in history was sparked by a hunters illegal campfire. For assistance, firefighters turn to the u. S. Military for help. Ca called into service is the mq1 predator, an unmanned drone. After becoming a household name following tours in iraq and afghanistan, the predator is california fires important eye in the sky. This remotely piloted aircraft starts the Daily Mission at an unassuming airfield east of los angeles. Its a completely unusual piece of technology. It looks like a strange alien bug. Its extremely arrerodynamic and sleeklooking, but also comes from almost a different planet. Its the mq1 predator. It has a propeller versus a jet engine. The wingspan on this aircraft is approximately 55 feet long. Its bigger than your average general aviation plane. I see one camera here and one here. Two cameras, one stacked on top of another. And then this one, you have the mts ball, which has multiple cameras. He can control it and move it. What are the different specs on the cameras . Are they intended for different purposes . Different uses. Theres basically a daytime camera, a nighttime camera, an infrared camera that detects body heat and temperature. Is the sensor ball the most expensive piece on the equipme equipment . It is. I dont know the exact numbers, but the cost of the ball is approximately half the cost of the aircraft. So this is the aircraft thats actually launching today . This is the aircraft thats launching. My crew are doing their preflight checks, and they work with the pilot. The make sure the plane is in working order before it takes off. It will take off at 6 00 a. M. Where will it go . Were tasked to fly up to the fire area and check out the fire as its burning. How long will it stay up . We have a full fuel load, and it can stay up over 20 hours. So where are we headed now . This is where the pilots and operator since when they control the aircraft. This is the cockpit, essentially . You have the pilot on the lefthand side and the operator sits on the righthand side. The screen is whats actually coming from the aircraft. Theyre flying the aircraft right now . Exactly. So that sensor ball we saw is operating . Thats correct. The mq1 is up in the air right now headed off to yosemite. There will be a handoff to the air force base. For the past three weeks, captain jeremy salzoni has been living at march air reserve base. Hes embedded to coordinate the intelligence provided by the mq1. Tell me about the magnitude of the fire in yosemite . The accessibility makes it complicated and why its grown to the size it has. With the inaccessibility around the entire area of the fire, it makes getting from one point to another very difficult. Now within 30 seconds there it is. The information is so rapid and accurate and immediate that its kind of hard to believe that i ever walked these things in the past. Were able to watch realtime information. I can see where the fire is and what its doing, potentially hazards come uppiing up and maybe advantageous areas to get the firefighters to. That potentially lifesaving information is being put to use here. Really, big operation here. At the california rim fires Incident Command Center near Yosemite National park. This is the Air National Guard mobile Emergency Operation center we rolled out here in order to help facilitate coordination and command and control of remotely piloted Aircraft Operations here in incident. This is where all the magic happens. All right. It can throw embers up to as much of a mile ahead of it. We do a wide scan first, and we zoom in on any heat signatures we find. One of the biggest advantages was the able to geolocate the fire line. Infrared imagery has been around for a while, but to transit those to us here, we can transfer them to a map and make it readily available invaluable. Were looking at the fullmotion video from the mq1 predator. In this picture right here, you can see how the smoke is masking the fire, so its hard to determine where the fire line actually is. Here hes now blended in that infrared on top of the day tv. Now we can clearly see where the fire line actually is. Captain, how do you feel about how this went . I think it was a huge success. Ive seen some violent things, but im not sure ive ever seen anything more violent than how strong this fire was, how much it was crowning, how fast it was moving, and how difficult it was for folks to contain. I believe 100 that we made a huge difference. What has access to this technology brought to you firefighting effort . Id have to give you the primaries of life safety. The ability to keep an eye on the men and women fighting the fire. In regards to firefighting safety and firefighting, ink were scratching the surface as far as the potential. What i love is it actually works, you know. This was kind of a test run, but it really helped those people on the ground. It goes beyond firefighting for sure. Search and rescue. Theres all sorts of cool applications. Given the stigma around drones, how willing was the military to work with you on the story and forthcoming with the information . They were completely open and super helpful. They were very excited and seemed to jump at the opportunity to shed this technology in a different light. Were going from one type of hot spot to a completely different type of hot spot. My idea was identifying hotspots of criminal activity. So its kind of like the plot line of a holewood movie. Theyre using Innovative New technology to predict when and where crime will occur. I got to ride along with two Different Police departments to see how it works. That sounds really cool. Well check it out when we come back. We want to hear what you think about the story. Join the conversation by welcome back, guys. Crystal you were about to take us on the most awesomely nerdy police ridealong ever. It was nerdy. I went to two Different Police departments and go along with their officers and their new secret weapon to fight crime is a computer. The computer was influencing where we went, and when we got there, we saw interesting stuff. So lets take a look. Roll call, Santa Cruz Police department. The calm before the storm. Its coming around and taking us to the map, please. I appreciate it. Our crime stats are showing the efforts you guys are making, and overall yeartodate right now were down 12 on overall crime. As the men and women of day shift lock, load and hit the road, theyre armed with an entirely new type of Law Enforcement weapon. All right. Where are we going . The ability to predict where crime is going to occur. We rolled out with them to see how it works. So downstairs here this is where we house the Operations Division of the police department. Deputy chief steve clark is a 20year veteran of the Santa Cruz Police department. He knows want the place inside and out. He also knows where it needs to go in the future, a knowledge that led him to an innovative predicting software called pretzel. At that time we remember focusing on vehicle burglaries as well as stolen cars, and we found the model was incredibly accurate at predicting the times and locations where these crimes were likely to occur. At that point we realize we have something here. At first it sounds a bit like minority report. The tom cruise movie in which a futuristic police unit apprehending criminals based on spooky preknowledge. The computer takes into effect actual incidents reported. It doesnt know anything about the demographics about the individuals in that area, what the economic status is of these individuals or anything about the person. Its all areaspecific. Today, fred has more than a toy to tinker in. Its the main Law Enforcement tool in their arsenal. Looking at today on day shift, this is an actual life map of where we think the predictive zones are for auto theft today. Now, the orange dots represent where we have had actual auto thefts. Whats interesting is as you look at the map, you see locations where weve had auto theft, but theres no boxes around them. Thats what the program does for us. The algorithm weighs those and lets us know if thats a significant thing we need to be concerned about for this shift. For me, i have an academic science background, so data is king. What do you think of police work, you think of guys going with their gut and using instinct to kind of motive where they would be patrolling and that type of thing. What is your response and what have you learned from using it . Were not telling you how to do police work. Were telling you where are the best locations to be at any given time in the day and police what you see. Police what you see. As it turns out, when you know what to look for and more importantly where to look for it, you can see a lot. It looks like theres a hotspot in this neighborhood area, seabright and murray street. Should we check that out . Yeah. Lets take a look at seabright and murray. Heres a car were coming on right here. I have people sitting in this car in this neighborhood. Why on earth would anybody sit in a car in a neighborhood . Watch their reaction to me. Whats going on, guys . Not much. Hey. How are you . Good, how about you . Were good, man. Cruising through the neighborhood. Do you live here . No. I work at the boardwalk. What do you do down there, man . What do you supervise . Rides. Rides. Very good. All right, man. You didnt look like you lived here, man. I didnt recognize you. Thats why im stopping. Have a good day. You, too. Thank you. There you go. I cant describe it to you, but there was something about the way that they reacted today now theyre leaving. Now we have an open car door right here. Ive got an open gate on this house as well. So were going to get out and look at this. Hi, police department. Hi. Hey, i was just is that your car sitting out there with your door open . Yeah, we just came open. I was just concerned and saw it sitting there and the gate was standing open. Thank you. We just got home. Were patrolling the neighborhood. Your house is right in the middle of the zone. In the first year santa cruz p. D. Saw assaults down 9 , burglaries down 11 , and robberies down 27 . Meanwhile, auto theft recovery was up 22 and arrests were up 56 . Weve seen how santa cruz is pioneering the future of police work, and this is already spreading to other cities across the country. For the past three months the seattle p. D. Has been prpting the new software into its patrol. I think any Police Agency is based on culture. You know, were tied to our past, and this is sort of a paradigm shift in how officers have done policing. Before it was random patrol and go find something, right . So youre successful if you write that ticket and make an arrest, but in this if youre out there and your presence alone dissueding a criminal from successful. For all the agencies using predpol, its about combining innovation with instinct and ringing up results. Its amazing what you see, the things that pop out, too, the anomalies that start to draw your attention. Im looking at this guy right now across the street. He has his up and downs about threequarters of the way down, and hes walking through this business district. Were going to stop and talk with him, actually. Whats going on, man . Nothing. What are we doing . How much have you had to drink today . I dont drink. What is your drug of choice . Marijuana. You looked like you used something more. Hands behind your back. I just told you, officer, the truth. A little episodic here. Were here in the hotspot and your instincts kicked in and he exhibited suspicious behavior. We talked with him, and thats when you start to get clues. He is really sort of the type of person that we need to be contacting and working in the policing system. It was the marriage of science right there as well as intuition and instinct and that good old gut feeling we talked about. Thats exactly what we saw play out right here. Its easy to see from predpol is popular with the santa cruz p. D. And gaining traction with other Law Enforcement agencies. In fairness, we did come across more than just the bad guys. Its amazing what you could see in a neighborhood by simply theres my two daughters. Hey, you guys. What are you doing . Shopping. You want to say hi . Theyre going to totally give me grief about it. That was super cool. How did you feel doing that . The really cool thing i thought about the use of the predictive policing model is not it helps us predict crime, but it gets the officers in the areas where theyre needed so they can make connections with people that live in the neighborhood or shopkeepers in those high crime areas. Thats helping them do more than just make arrests. So its Like Computers are like connecting the police to the community. Really cool to see kind of similar to the story how this use of technology with, you know, police or firefighters is actually making us safer. Its a nice thing. Lindsay, your story is a little different. Mines totally different. When the producers said i would do a story on two young guys experimenting with mushrooms, i had a very different ideas of what this story was going to be. Ill tell you all about it when we come back. Well check that all out welcome back to tech know. Theyre telling us awesome science stories for the week. Linds lindsay, you were hanging out with two dudes experiments with shrooms. Tell me about this. I got to do to upstate new york and meet with these guys who are revolutionizing the way we think about packaging goods. You know, every cubic inch of this soil right here is teaming with millions of inches of mycilium and all around us fungi is everywhere. When youre with two geniuses, youre sure to stumble on something scientifically complex. You can see the mycilium growing directly into the log. Chances are it somehow involves a mushroom. Were here at incubative designs and im one of the scientists at this revolutionary newbie yo Materials Companies where we take local farm waste and mix it with tissue from mushrooms and growing replacements for plastic foams that are used in protective packaging. Why is this so important . Whats the problem with styrofoam . Theres about 10 billion to 20 billion of styrofoam products used globals. Its not like plastics equals bad. Theyre fundamentally uncompatible with the earths biosphere. Weve all seen this before. Almost every big product we buy comes packaged in this material. These are made from unsustainable petro chemicals, and it can take up to a million years, maybe more, for this material to biodegrade and leave the earth. We use a combination of agriculture waste like corn husks and mushrooms as a resin and combine them together and grow them in a mold to make a shape from everything from packaging to auto parts. A mushroom growing out of the side of tree is comprised out of mycillium. If you look in the tree structure, you find a vast network of these strands, little fibers growing through the soil of the environment as well as in trees. Thats whats really fueling the mushrooms onto the side of the tree or to the forest floor. Do you guys grow your own mushrooms . We never grow mushrooms. We keep it in a vegetative growth stage where its making more root structure. The initial concept of using mushrooms as a resin was inspieshed through holding them together. The combination was agricultural waste as a food stock didnt come up later until i teamed up with gavin. It takes close to seven days for a product to grow from beginning to completion, but well show you how it works in second. The waste is first cleaned right before adding the macillium and gets incubated for two to three days and its a solid, white mass. Next it goes through a trauma, a machine that grinds the waste. This is reminding me of willie wonka and the chocolate factory, and im afraid ill get sucked up. Grinding it into a mulch so it can be packed into the molds. The molds are then stacked and left for another three days where the mysillium does what it does. It grows. You have to bake it to stunt the growth so it can be sold to corporations like Dell Computers and other fortune 500 companies. Heres whats really cool about mushroom packaging. I can take this packaging material and actually bury it in my yard. Within a couple of months it will biodegrade and add valuable nutrients to the soil. Theyre about to begin large scale manufacture of plasticfree products, and the possibilities go far beyond protective packaging. Theyre now developing home insulation. Welcome to the tiny house. So what is the tiny nows . Our tiny house is both walls are filled with mushroom insulation. The insulation and structure of the wall. What was really impressive about these mushroom Building Materials was their resistance to fire. Dont try this at home, kids. Whoa. It will keep burning for a while. As you can see, its not exactly the safest thing to have in your house. We have an open flame on this for a few minutes before it actually becomes any danger. Thats amazing. The mycilium acts as a fire retard retardant. Overall, you have more time to get out of the house. Do you feel like youre having an impact on humanity . Yeah. Really, we see this as looking forward centuries, not just days. We want to make sure that this environment is available for our grandchildren and our grandchildrens children and that were talking best use of the Natural Resources provided us today. I absolutely love that story. They are two guys like changing the world using fungi. They are, and both of them and everybody that works at ecovative that fungi can completely change the way that we package materials and that there are millions of other applications, too. It was really interesting. I was looking at the home insulation, and i was wondering about that application. The problem is is that its biodegradable. Dust eats it, and im not sure i want things eating my home. Thats true. Thats something theyre working with and adapt the materials. Its designed by nature, which i think is totally, totally cool. Amazing stories, you guys. It was cool to hear about forest fires, police work and fungi. Theyre all really fascinating. Check back with us next week on tech know for awesome cool science. Dive deep into the stories and go behind the scenes at aljazeera. Com ajtechknow. Saturdays on al jazeera america. A team of scientists are taking their inspiration from nature. Technology. Its a vital part of who we are they had some dynamic fire behavior. And what we do. Transcranial direct stimulation. Dont try this at home techknows team of experts show you how the miracles of science. This is my selfie. What can you tell me about my future . Can effect and surprise us. Sharks like affection. Techknow, where Technology Meets humanity. Saturday, 6 30 eastern. Only on al jazeera america. No other sport can kick off mass emotion in indonesia like football, even if the National Team languishes near the bottom of world rankings. Indonesians, theyre really crazy. We can see their ranking in fifa is going down, going down, going down. But every game in the stadium, 80,000 people, 90,000 people. Even local competitions turn smaller stadiums into cauldrons of passion, with crowd turnouts matching the top leagues in the world