tv Monday in Parliament BBC News January 7, 2020 2:30am-3:01am GMT
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of iraq, as demanded by iraq's parliament and floated in a letter from an american general there, suggesting a withdrawal. tensions have been raised to boiling point by the assassination, in an american drone s following the assassination of the iranian general, qasim soleimani. the funeral procession honouring general soleimani is reaching its final stage, as his body is taken to his hometown of kerman in south—eastern iran, where he will be buried in the coming hours. earlier, the coffin moved from tehran to the shia holy city of qom. with australia still battling bushfires and more hot windy weather to come, prime minister scott morrison has promised more than a billion dollars to aid recovery. he has been heavily criticised for his response to the disaster. fires have razed an area nearly the size of austria.
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you up—to—date on the headlines. — you up—to—date. now on bbc news: click. are you well? that was great. trying to give spencer direction. 0k, we'll set back up the top, please. we just did a stagger through which is about three hours behind schedule. hopefully it's all going to work out in the end when we go live at 5 o'clock. no pressure. fingers crossed it's all going to happen. i'm just changing bits, i hope he doesn't mind. like that? yeah. are you pleased with that rehearsal? kind of, yeah, ijust want these to be in. it was quite nerve racking at this point but i'm excited. there's a bit of a buzz, isn't there? been looking forward to it for weeks. why are you guys here tonight? ijust want to learn, really, and see all the new stuff going on.
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are you sure we shouldn't be there already? trust me, we're going to get there on time. but dundee‘s 500 miles away. the train‘s going to take hours, even a flight‘s going to take too long. there is no way... seriously, i had a word with a guy, he knows a guy and he said there's a shortcut. all we need to do is use this. you need to get out more. we just need to press start. goodness, spencer, are you 0k? yeah, just, just, just go with it. go with what? what the...? right, follow me. ok, this is weird. come on.
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are you sure this is the most direct route? pretty sure, yeah. can we at least stop and ask for directions? no need, i've got a map, it'll be fine. over here. ah, um, oh. oh, you had it upside down, didn't you? little bit, yeah. ok, this is more like it. ah, dundee, we should only be a couple of blocks away now. "blocks"! nice, i see what you did there. yep, there it is. v&a dundee. here we come! announcer: from v&a dundee, this is bbc click live. please welcome your hosts,
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lara lewington and spencer kelly. yes, it's that time of year again, where we leave the comfort of the click offices and go live to the world, or at least to a crowd of very eager tech fans. v&a dundee was the spectacular location for a show that took in everything from artificial intelligence to facial recognition. the museum not only celebrates the past, but also looks to the future. most people's idea of robots are shaped by the robots they see in science fiction, so like in a film or tv or video games or music. but robots are a bit more real than what we think. so most children will now grow up with siri or alexa or some kind of smart helper in their life, and i think in the future that's just going to increase. we're going to have more robotic helpers helping our children and helping us, just increasing more and more on an everyday basis.
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currently on display is the exhibition design between human and machine. so rather than robots coming in and replacing us and replacing our jobs, i think the future is a bit more of an optimistic one. we've got an amazing structure, a commission that's been specially built here for us at the v&a dundee, and this is all about the idea of humans and robots collaborating together to create something amazing and wonderful, and i think that's a bit more what the future will be like, so slightly less pessimistic than what we imagine. i hope. in recent years, dundee has become something of a digital powerhouse. it's synonymous with video games like lemmings, grand theft auto and yes, minecraft. dundee has the honour, we believe, of being the city in the world with the highest per capita volume of games developers.
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that's come around for a number of reasons. it started off back in the 1980s, there was a lot of us programming away on sinclair spectrums that happened to be made in the city, so you could always pick one up ex—factory when they went slightly wrong for less than they cost in the shops. some amazing video games came out of the city at that point, and that gave a lot of us the inspiration to set our own companies up. the world's first video games degree was offered here by abertay university all the way back in 1997, so we thought we'd check out some of their more recent work. all in the name of social interaction, of course. why is abertay university so hot on gaming? at abertay, all the staff have either previously made video games or we currently make video games and we are all part of a research lab called the abertay game lab that make really fun, experimental games that push the boundaries of computer gaming in different ways. so you've got some other students playing some other of your games over there.
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that game was created by dr mona bozdog who sloped on with lara. now, mona, there are a lot of different games here, all telling interesting, different stories. can you tell me a bit about what you've created here? yes, so, the game you see is called assembly. we're all in dundee and the year is 1981 and there's thousands of women in the timex factory assembling the first ever computers, so the zx81 and the zx spectrum. these computers changed the face of games. that's basically a recreation of the assembly line. so we have the women workers trying to assemble the zx spectrum computers, from populating the boards to actually packaging and shipping the zx spectrums. this is actually a bit of social history here as well, isn't it? yes, it is. it is what we usually call 'herstories'. because they're the alternative histories, they're the hidden figures of the video games industry and the video games history, and it was the women who assembled, they were tremendously skilled
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and they basically brought us the first computers. this eerie, stifling hot landscape looks otherworldly, but in reality, we're a couple of hours‘ drive north of los angeles. this area, known as the coso range, was formed by several volcanic eruptions almost half a million years ago. back then, rivers would run through here, creating this dramatic, unpredictable terrain. i know we are in california, but i want you to picture somewhere completely different. i want you to imagine that i'm walking across the surface of the moon. because the technology we've come to see today is going to be put through its paces ahead of a groundbreaking lunar mission due to take place in the next decade. one which should teach us more about the moon than we've ever known. this is a team from nasa's famous jet propulsion lab and this is axel, a robot that might one day explore areas of the moon that have been
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untouched for billions of years. there are more than a dozen huge caverns found on the moon, created when lava flowed quickly across the surface and hardened, leaving a void underneath. eventually, parts of that lava surface collapsed like a sinkhole. it's into these holes axel will dive in for a closer look at the layers of rock beneath. not only that, but the robot might discover locations suitable for human researchers to live on the moon for extended periods of time. but before that futuristic vision can be realised, axel needs to be put through its paces in california. so this particular design you're looking at, it's a two—wheeled rover that can operate upside—down or right side up, and that's important when you are going over extreme terrain. you could be easily tipped up the other way and we want to be able to survive that. the other thing you notice, this has no steering wheels. the reason why it has two wheels
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is because it is differentially driven, so it can go along, it can go forward and backward, but can also take turns and turn around. like a wheelchair? obviously, we're not going to test this in the parking lot here, but it does mean we have to go 300 metres in that direction and the only way to do that, i'm afraid, is to carry it. this is a team which certainly knows what it's doing. they were involved in getting the incredible mars rover to the red planet. the moon may seem like a shorter, simplertrip, but going back and getting deeper could unravel important mysteries. we're specifically targeting this pit crater in the sea of tranquillity. and this is something that they discovered only a few years ago. some of the craters on the moon actually aren't your traditional impact craters, they are these very strange, vertical bore holes into the moon and no—one's exactly sure what those are, but what we do know is that there's a lot of geological history that's exposed there on the side of this crater wall. if axel does make it to the moon, it
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will be attached to a lunar rover, which will land a few hundred feet away from where the team wants to explore. through that tether, axel will get its power and instructions from the team and it'll act like a rope as it abseils down into the moon's depths. today, we of course don't have the lunar rover with us, so axel will be supported by a rock. this is tricky business. if it's not secure, we could see axel plummet to the rocks below. it's a long, slow, nervous process with a few hiccups along the way as axel struggled with the unforgiving volcanic terrain. but it was mission accomplished. axel was able to abseil its way down the cliffs edge, if only on earth for now. this would be the first repelling rover ever to be fielded off world, so if we can establish that technology and gain confidence in that, now we can start looking
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at places like mars. they're a little harder to get to but have lots of interesting questions that need answered. and if it works, there's a whole galaxy of possibilities as to where axel goes next. and if you thought that was cool, i was lucky enough to be joined onstage by axel‘s little brother, puffer. it's the pop—up flat—folding explorer robot. it's fallen over on earth. it's actually designed to take impacts like that. those balloons you saw is the material these are made out of, that we've landed on mars before. ok, wow, because this looks pretty flimsy. yes, well, this is similar to a bullet—proof fabric. we take it and fold it up and that is that robot, and this origami shape takes the impacts very nicely. ok, so it's tougher than it looks. now tell me what its real world purpose is. this can take any instrument. this one's for a little micro
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imager, so we can do any science that you're looking to do wherever you want to go. these aren't the only wheels we have for our two—wheeled robots. ok, so, if consumers were to buy one of these, because that is the aim, isn't it, what exactly would they be doing with it? well, we can do citizen science, so they can take them out into the field, they can have different sensors on them and then we can get huge datasets that we can use to do state—of—the—art science here on earth. ok, and how much would it cost, because this looks like a pretty pricey bit of kit. this one is, it's about $5,000 for the two wheels but we can get them down to tens of dollars. ok, quite a difference. this isn't the only robot you've got with you? no, it is not. there's another one literally climbing the walls! let's take a look at what we've got over here. what is this, exactly? this is our durable reconnaissance observation platform. you can tell it's a little bit of an eye that climbs up the wall and you can see the controls right there that can actually sense gravity. so it's climbing the lift shaft. it's climbing quite nicely there, but what's it actually for?
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what is it for? so, it's for basically surveillance. this is an earth application, but the same wheels we can put on these rovers and we can climb 60 degree slopes on a mars analogue. but you've also created something that's for digging beneath the surface. we're going to take a look at it here. the future of robotics is underground, so this is our exobiology extant life surveyor that's trying to get through the open window that cassini found on enceladus, moon of saturn, that goes right to an alien ocean. how easy to break through is that surface, do you think? this surface? well, there's these active geysers or plume vents that we know are sourced from the ocean. so right here, we'll get our first taste and smell of an alien ocean. a huge thank you to you, your colleagues from nasa who also came, and of course, to all the bots. we've got to be nice to them, i think. applause. robotic voice: speaking...at...
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professor annalu waller has dedicated 30 years of her life to researching technologies to improve communication for those who have difficulty speaking. it's very much like the predictive text on your phone, but, as we saw when we invited her onto the stage... robotic voice: ..words... ..it can be a very slow process. actually telling a story in real—time is laborious, time—consuming. a lot of our focussed communication aids only type 8—10 words a minute. how on earth do you conduct a real
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conversation in that speed? annalu's team, in partnership with cambridge university, has created a new system that remembers what you've typed before and offers up whole sentence chunks in one go. it's hard to find whole sentences to use as i speak. so, as humans we always tell stories. so what i'm telling you now, i've told many people before. and this is where it gets even more clever. a body—worn camera observes where annalu is and who she's speaking to. it can then suggest sentences that are relevant to that situation. so, this is the computer vision brain behind our system. the camera i've got in my right hand here is the one the person wears around their neck, so the camera can see what they can see.
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and it can see the person, they are speaking to, so at the moment it sees me. and you can see on the screen it picks out my face to identify whether i'm a known person, whether i'm a friend, and if it knows me, who i am. it takes a guess from the whole environment it can see to say where are we? are we in a cafe, at work? and this information we then use to predict the right sentences i might want to say in this environment with this communication partner. the more annalu uses it, the more it learns and the faster the system becomes. and the system might think we're in a museum, i'm talking to a person i've never met before. that might be an opportunity to talk about my work, so it will bring up sentences i've used before to talk about my work so i can access them timely. stories are really important because they provide the fundamental essence of being human. we are our stories. we are all very talkative people.
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laughter i mean — i know people who repeat themselves over and over again. we all do! laughter i mean — i know people who repeat themselves over and over again. laughter we all do! laughter and applause we were also lucky enough to be joined by the minister for public finance and digital economy, kate forbes. and ceo of the scottish government—backed innovation centre, data lab, gillian doherty. for anyone who doesn't know what data lab do, do you just want to tell them a little about what it is, gillian? sure, so the data lab is scotland's innovation centre for data science and artificial intelligence. and ultimately, it's about driving value for the country by leveraging our data better.
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and you've already had some life—changing partnerships, haven't you? tell me about the cancer one. we have, yes. so, we've been working with the beatson cancer hospital on using computer vision technology to help the radiologists dealing delineate tumours from healthy tissues and complex neck cancers. we've also worked across multiple of the health wards, using data to improve patient—reported experience measures and outcome measures and integrate that with the clinical treatment as part of their unfortunate cancer journey. but looking at some of the issues there are in scotland today, high unemployment is of course one of them, how do you perceive technology affecting that? because obviously there are pros and cons. that's right. and technology's definitely going to disrupt the job market as we know it, but on the other hand, we also know that the technology sector in scotland is constantly looking for new skills and talent. so ourjob is to match the people that are currently looking for work with the businesses
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and the organisations that are looking for those skills. jobs will change. there are jobs we do now that didn't exist 20, 30, 40 years ago. and depending on the research you read, for primary children, up to 60% of those children starting that are school right now will have jobs that don't even exist just now. so it's hard to get your head around that, but whose grandmother was a search engine optimisation specialist? whose grandpa was a vlogger? and you are two women working in technology. do you really think that things are changing? very, very slowly. so they are changing and we're seeing that in scotland, because closing the gender gap is key to what we're trying to achieve. but it's about going into primary schools and encouraging young women and girls to think that they can actually work in this sector and work in this area and see incredible role models. now, we all know about cars and pollution, right? but how about a vehicle where the more you drive it, the cleaner it makes the air?
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well, the hyundai nexo claims to do just that. where you'd normally have an engine, there's a fuel cell stack, where hydrogen and oxygen combine to create the electricity that powers the car and charges the battery. but can it actually clean the air? well, we braved the very cold dundee air to put it to the test. so, over here we have robin hayles from hyundai. hi. hey, what's gonna happen? so, we're gonna demonstrate how the filtration system of a hyundai nexo cleans the air as it drives along. what we're going to do is — we've got a pump here, which we're gonna add this, which is a jar of pm10 and pm2.5 particulates. nasty stuff! yeah. this is the stuff that comes out of trucks, cars, buses as they're driving along. so that's soot and carbon and stuff like that? yes, yep.
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all right, so, no sniffing that then while we open the jar. no. we're going to bung that in there, aren't we? yep, my colleague, mr shim, he's gonna add that into the system. 0k. keep an eye on what happens to the air as we do it. you'll see the soot go into the balloon. wow! look at that! that looks filthy! imagine what would happen if you held this piece of white paper up to the exhaust of your petrol car, it's going to get pretty grey, isn't it? give it a squeeze. ah, yeah, this is quite satisfying, actually. get as much air onto that is possible and let's just see. smells all right, i have to say. all right, let's have a look. show that to the camera. that's marvellous. so pretty much, yeah, there's pretty much nothing on there. so that's good, but we've also — we can also show you what the car has filtered out of the air. so let's have the clean filter in. this is what the filter looked like when it went into the car, we've taken this one out of the car now.
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and, hm, can you see the difference? yeah, so that's what it sucked out of the air in the last two or three minutes. yep, that's all the particulates out of the air, so it's everything in that jar, it's now on that filter. everything in the jar is now on the filter. nice. now there's one other thing that hydrogen cars produce, and that's water vapour, which you're assuring me is very, very clean, is that right? it's very clean. i'll show you how clean. all right, so we're gonna get a glass of water, or as it's known in dundee, ice, out of the ball, and you think that is very, very clean water? yep, that's pure water. so this isn't tap water, this isn't bottled water you get in the shop, this is 100% pure water. and robin assures me it's so pure you can drink it and don't keel over. so, uh, well, go on then. you said it. go on, give us — give us a... ugh! a bit plasticky, but better than some supermarket bottles. three, two, one... push! back inside, and a click live show wouldn't be a click live show
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without waving, and generally getting a bit overexcited. all that remains is to thank everyone who turned up to see us live — and of course you at home — for watching. from all of us here at click, we hope you have a very happy new year. go, go, go! yes, yes, yes! theme music hello. we've got multiple areas of low pressure to deal with across the uk in the coming days. monday's rain has cleared away, but waiting in the wings is our next system pushing in from off the atlantic, this one likely to bring some disruption across parts of scotland and northern england, given the strength of the wind and also some heavy rain.
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that's only part of the story, though, because we are also pulling up some very mild air. temperatures quite widely in the mid—teens, maybe even higher to the east of higher ground. but it's the strength of the wind that we're concerned about through tuesday. severe gales across scotland and northern england, we have a met office yellow warning in place, some disruption is possible. and with the wind also comes some heavy rain, particularly across scotland, likely to linger through much of the day. easing from northern ireland through the afternoon, some of that rain getting into northern england, north wales, maybe into south—west england through the afternoon. further south and east things stay mainly dry if rather cloudy. a few brighter skies through the eastern side of england through the morning. but some very windy conditions through tuesday, particularly across scotland, gusts 60—70mph, maybe 75 for some northern and western coasts, but very mild particularly to the east of higher ground. strong and gusty winds across northern england and north wales too, 30—a0mph gusts across much of central southern england and into wales, the strongest winds really are across northern england
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and scotland, but likely to bring some disruption. as we go through tuesday evening, we keep those strong winds across scotland, starting to ease further south, we have got a band of cloud and rain just sliding its way southwards across england and wales, that rain becoming increasingly patchy. but wintry showers starting to develop across scotland and quite a range in temperature come first thing wednesday morning. very mild across central southern england and wales, but turning much colder further north. there's still some strong winds across scotland as we go into wednesday, keeping an eye on this system here, pushing some rain into south—west england later in the day on wednesday. but most of us will see some sunshine around on wednesday. legacy of cloud clearing from southern england through wednesday morning, wintry showers piling into scotland, and then through wednesday afternoon we start to see cloud and rain starting to nudge into wales and south—west england. still in some fairly mild air across central southern england and into wales, double figures here,
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but much colder further north again with those wintry showers across scotland. thursday is a very messy day, most of us will see some spells of rain, still some wintry showers across scotland. that will ease away and briefly on friday, this ridge of high pressure building, bringing quieter, drier days. so for the end of the week, further rain, particularly on thursday, the winds easing, then drier and colder on friday.
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welcome to bbc news, my name's mike embley. our top stories: the united states denies it plans to withdraw troops from iraq despite a general‘s letter that appears to suggest it. huge crowds gather in iran to mourn general soleimani. his killing in an american drone strike has raised tensions to boiling point. more hot windy weather to come, as australia's prime minister promises more than a billion dollars to fight the bushfires. an indonesian man declared the worst serial rapist in british criminal history, has beenjailed for a minimum of 30 years. spacex launches new mini—satellites as part of its plans to build a global internet system.
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