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tv   Meet the Author  BBC News  January 7, 2018 7:45pm-8:01pm GMT

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of the show. please welcome to the stage kate russell. applause brilliant, isn't it? when they said i'd have my name in lights, i was expecting more broadway than boardwalk — but it's a start! it's going to be a really, really crammed show. and i don't want you getting too comfortable, because there's a lot of audience participation. so i hope you're ready to take part. do you want to see some tech? crowd: yes! good stuff. i don't believe you. do you want to see some tech? crowd: yes! i think so. all right, so first of all, we need you to settle down, because our first guest tonight is very mysterious. his name is psychicjoe, and i'm told things are about to get very strange... eerie music playing hello. computers are a wonderful thing,
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but we're going to put them to one sidejust for the moment. i'd like to introduce you to the power of your own mind. breathe slowly and gently, and i'll discover more about you, with just a candle. now, i sometimes get some powers and signals through, and sometimes i get things wrong. but most of the time, it's right. so stay with me. i mightjust get pieces of information that come... i'm starting with a "".g let me just put this down for a moment. there's a "g" — so i'm going to start to pull something out of the audience. hopefully it's one of you. i'm getting a "".g let's start with "g" — gareth? i think this is him. because those are two different sites. hello, gareth. how are you? we havejoe, and he's going to identify some people in the audience, and he's going to pretend to read their mind
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by telling them things about them, by reading information from them. it's actually us researching these people online and feeding that to him through a hidden earpiece. les? les...? it could have been a man, but i won't make wild assertions. is there a les? leslie? welcome to the show. glad you've got a microphone with you now. so we're researching some of the people in the audience right now. the gentleman who's just sat down in front of us — i've just found the address details of somebody who sat down at the front with her partner as well. so we're researching as much as we can about the people that are in front of us. do you have children called jack and sasha? um. . .we have cats called jack and sasha. oh, it's close! it's close, isn't it? i've set up a free wi—fi network. most people quite happily click "free wi—fi". it says please type in their name, click "connect", and that is how we start. we then have their name. it's the first thing to work from. fortunately, as well, because it's quite a big event, people will like the facebook page.
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people will say, "i'm at bbc click." we can see that publicly and openly. is this legal? completely legal, yes. that's a question we get asked a lot. we're just looking at information people have made available themselves. but congratulations on your four—year anniversary. a round of applause please. applause there's two main lessons - be careful what you're signing up for. the biggest thing that's helping us the most right now — people's social media profiles are open and public. we're not saying not to use it, just check that your profile is private. i'm a complete stranger to everybody in this audience, but so far i've been able to go onto all of their profiles and look at where they were born, their pictures, their statuses. as a total stranger, you probably don't want me reading that information. so just — we're not saying don't use it — just make it private so only your friends can see. that would protect you from all of the things we've found out so far, actually. we listen to radio, to tv, to music, to podcasts, using speakers.
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big speakers in your house and small speakers that you wear in your ears or that are built into your smartphones. so i'm just choosing the perfect bit of coffee for the levitation. it has to be both kind of small, but also regular, and i don't think they normally make coffee beans with levitation in mind. one of the things that steve has been working on is ultrasounds, 0k? and we've got a few ultrasound demos here. so i'll tell you what — rather than explain more about it, shall we, uh...just give it a whirl? so i'll tell you what — who's getting something there? raise your hand if you can hear this, then drop your hand as soon as you can't hear it again. so this is unusual for a speaker, because usually when you switch a speaker on, everyone can hear it. right now, we're getting a really narrow beam. really focused beam of sound. imagine this is a lot like a flashlight. imagine i'm pointing
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a torch around the room. you'd only see certain parts of it. this is the same idea, except with sound. so we're focusing the sound and we can focus all that energy, all that sound energy, in a specific place. wow! this is the weirdest and slowest and most continuous mexican wave i've ever seen... i have no idea what you're hearing, because he's never pointed it in my direction. beeping whoa! seriously? sorry, it's quite unpleasant, isn't it? it can make normal sounds as well. so ultrasound is really high—frequency sound, and then you're tying other stuff into that, which you're then sending around the room? so ultrasound is out of the range of human hearing, is pretty much the definition. we can hear up to 20,000 hertz, and anything above that is ultrasound. we can't hear ultrasound, but this is an ultrasound wave that's been combined or modulated with an audible signal. i tell you what — this is not just the only ultrasound weirdness we've got. it gets even weirder. pop that down, for goodness's sake.
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this looks like it's landed from another planet. this is incredible. stephen, for the second time tonight, what on earth is going on? so, if we can in here, you can see there's quite a regular pattern on some of these. i can't get too close because it disrupts the sound field. but maybe you can see there's a few balls — a bit of a gap. so how are you using ultrasound to actually make stuff levitate? well, these speakers are producing a big ultrasound signal, that's making a standing wave. and in between the gaps of the standing wave, the balls can get trapped and they get kept in the same place. oh, wow! well, that's fantastic. in fact, that's so amazing, steve, i think we deserve a drink. would you mix us one? yes, of course, spencer. fantastic, right. this is the weirdest drink... we rehearsed that, could you tell? what is this, steve? we've got a lovely, lovely delight for you today. it's a single grain of coffee with a, uh...drop of milk, all levitating in the middle of the air. it's a latte. laughter you have to have it in, though. you can't have it to go, unfortunately.
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right, so i'm going to try this. my tongue's not long enough... really slowly... laughter 0h! you got it! applause that's really...coffee—y. that's like really, really strong. is that supposed to be that strong? yes, yeah. that's what we've found. sugar tastes sweeter, and coffee's bitter. fantastic. sri, steve, thank you very much. a round of applause for sri, steve and the ultrasound latte! applause there were so many amazing demos and displays in the show that we just can't fit it into this program. here's a look at some of the other highlights from our evening of delight. we transformed our tech—loving audience into musicians, as kate and i conducted the biggest ever micro:bit processor orchestra. let's have some more micro:bits
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over here in the air. ok, let's have a few at the back... hold those up. 0h, great. i can see them all in the sky. we are still waiting on the guinness book of records to get back to us, though. we explored the potential of ar, with our lucky audience members left cowering as a full—scale aircraft suddenly appeared over their heads. hello, world! 300,000 peoplejoined us on facebook live during the evening as we asked them whether robots should feel pain. edward nemil, thank you for this question on facebook: "sacrificing a robot for the greater good might be necessary. why would you want it to feel pain?" if we're going to keep having a servant class of robots, then we shouldn't go down that route. but the aims of increasing intelligence may make that impossible. we watched drones that study the landscape and drones that dive, as we looked at how
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they could help in the future. it's been absolutely amazing. have you had a good time? crowd: yes! thank you very much for watching, and we will see you soon. bye. cheering and applause cut it. well done, well done, well done. good evening. it has been a cold day that many us saw some sunshine on
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sunday. with those clear skies, a cold night ahead. this view was taken by one of our weather watchers in argyll and bute. stay over the hills after a wintry weekend. as we had through monday, it will be a cold and frosty start of the day. there will be sunshine across the northern half of the country. through tonight, blue colours on the map, showing us us a sharp frost around. during the early hours of monday morning, in the towns and cities, it's below freezing in the north, minus double digits across parts of scotland and northern england. less cold around the far south as there is more cloud fishing in here which edges further northwards through the midlands by lunchtime. northern england and northern ireland holding onto sparkling winter sunshine through the day. temperatures of 2—6d for most of us after a cold and frosty start of the day. monday night and we continue to see cloud in the south moving further northwards. with light winds, some fairly dense
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fog patches forming in the early hours of tuesday. temperatures not as cold because we have that fog keeping temperatures from falling too low but watch out for potential disruption on tuesday morning, thanks to this dense fog patches. 0n tuesday, this weather system tries to move in from the west but before it gets there, a lot of dry weather. you can see the mist and fog on tuesday morning. it will lift and clear but it's a grey day. some drizzle, a cloudy day across scotla nd drizzle, a cloudy day across scotland and northern england, compared to recent days. rain arrives in the west later in the afternoon, that will continue to edge further eastwards across the country. from tuesday night into wednesday. through the day on wednesday, that rain will move east to west across many parts of the country. introducing mild air, temperatures in double digits in the south, fairly cool across scotland
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and northern ireland and there will be some wet weather arriving in most parts. through the week ahead, after a cold start, the rain arrives midweek and things start to feel less cold than they have been. goodbye for now. this is bbc news. the headlines at eight: theresa may defends the government's record on the nhs, insisting it is properly funded for coping with the winter pressures. we have put extra money in for coping with winter pressures. in the budget in november, we also announced that for the next couple of years, there will be further money going into the national health service. they haven't got a plan to get people off colleagues in corridors. those elderly people this freezing january, being treated in ambulances. the prime minister will carry out a cabinet reshuffle tomorrow. there are reports that several ministers could either lose theirjobs or be moved. 32 people are missing after a collision between an oil tanker and a cargo ship
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in the east china sea. the damage and volume of oil spilled are not yet known. also in the next hour, plans to plant 50 million trees
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