this week, a new way to detect alzheimer's — lara visits the virtual reality world, helping in the early diagnosis of dementia. oh, i'm quite close. yeah, well... well, relatively close. maybe i'm not that close at all. would you be happy with your kids taking this kind of science lesson? with the right amount of pressure, the great pyramid could generate a tremendous amount of electricity. we'll investigate the ai targeting children with disinformation. and we're in india to see how the diamond industry could become more sustainable by growing precious stones ina lab.

the royal institution of great britain. for the past two centuries, this independent charity has sought to connect as many people as possible with the wonders of science. famed for its christmas lectures, which are aired by the bbc, the royal institution's iconic theatre is a place where leading scientists regularly share their work with live audiences. one area of scientific research which affects us all is in the diagnosis and treatment of serious illnesses. now, the great thing is science has helped us live longer, but the flip side of that is that we are now discovering illnesses which mainly only occur in old age. yeah. many of us have watched the decline of loved ones with dementia, and whilst there's no cure, there are treatments to help manage the symptoms. it's really important to diagnose it early, though, and technology is helping to play its part in that. since the 1940s, gps have been testing memory with pen and paper.

and the results of that test are confirmed by a lumbar puncture. not only is that highly invasive, but it can also only be performed by a neurologist. now, researchers at university college london are using virtual reality to help detect early signs of alzheimer's disease, before it reaches the more severe stages of dementia. we know that in individuals with dementia diseases, there's two components. there's the biological component, which might be detected by a blood test, but there's also the cognitive — the thinking and the memory and the navigation — component. and that's the problem that we're trying to solve is how do we complement new biological tests with really good cognitive tests that can detect it many years before dementia starts? if you look at the neuroscience of how the disease starts in the brain, it starts in the region that we think is responsible for our ability to navigate. there's also an incredible experience where you get completely immersed in a new environment, and the way we've designed it is a really beautiful open

field where you can see mountains, pine trees. so, we're trying to make it as much of a relaxing process as possible. it's time to go into the virtual world and then i'm going to be navigating my way around. yes, exactly. from a starting point, the user has to follow the cones, and then information from the virtual landscape is removed and they need to find their way back to where they started from. and this is the controller. and you will only have to use the trigger button, which is the one... that one? yeah. basically, you are immersed in this virtual environment. there's the one. i'm just going to walk towards the cliff. and as soon as you reach, you stop. i need to remember this spot to come back to later. now go to two. three. oh, i'm somewhere else. what's happening now? so basically this time we kept

all the ground information, as you can notice. yeah. but we removed completely all the distant landmarks. ok, so this is easier for distance, but harder for direction. exactly. that's great. yeah, you got it. i think it was over here. the tricky bit, trying to get back to cone one. oh, i'm quite close. yeah, well... well, relatively close. maybe i'm not that close at all. i'm in the right field, i think might be as close as i am. well, i don't know how i did, but it seemed rather challenging and i've done a lot of vr before, so i'm used to walking around in one of these headsets. i wonder how it would be for someone doing it for the first time for this purpose. maybe it'd be thoroughly immersive so it would do the job well, or maybe it would be a bit distracting and make them feel a bit nervous. i don't know. the test doesn't discriminate based on language or culture. navigation is something that we all do. we think that this is therefore

a test that works across different cultures, regardless of education, language, demographics. but we haven't tested those diverse populations who historically have always been slightly disenfranchised by standard testing and say, "well, actually, we can do it, "we can apply this one and identify in you too." we've seen a turning point in alzheimer's detection recently. researchers have developed a blood test that could uncover the disease long before symptoms emerge. and a new fda—approved drug may see the progression of the disease slowed down. this means that one day it could become manageable for longer. ok, i'm in a field surrounded by cliffs. these are the first major breakthroughs that the scientific community has seen in the past 20 years. and although they are in their early stages, it gives us hope that one day the impact of dementia may be lessened. the royal institution is famed for its role in science education.

it hosts science shows and workshops, and it creates resources for schools. and thatjob�*s become more important than ever in a world where telling fact from fiction is becoming increasingly difficult. and jacqui wakefield has been investigating how children are being targeted online with fake science. under—18s are the biggest audience on youtube... my favourite youtuber is a gamer called dantdm. i like, like animal videos. mr beast. ..and parents and schools now rely on it as a tool to access great science content. but there's a new type of content creator, using artificial intelligence to create videos full of false information. imagine being told that the world you live in is not real. creators are tagging these videos as educational content, and they're often beating legitimate science videos in the race to be recommended.

these videos do well because they are potentially in some way maybe conspiratorial. you know, we're all fascinated by things that run counter to what we're officially told, and children obviously maybe are more susceptible perhaps to this than adults. we wanted to see if these videos were reaching children. so we created an experiment. we set up four children's accounts on youtube. each account watched 50 science videos from legitimate creators. after only four days, one of the bad science channels cropped up in the recommended videos. once we clicked these videos, they flooded our recommended feed. but would kids in the real world believe what they were seeing? with the right amount of pressure, the great pyramid could generate a tremendous amount of electricity. i find it really interesting that pyramids can make

electricity. pyramid power plants were and are possible. i was quite surprised to find out... ..just a pile of rocks can form electricity. i i didn't know that people so long ago would be able to make electricity and use modern technology. the person who was talking sounded very professional and knew what he was talking about. we found more than 50 channels creating these bad science videos, and they are getting hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of views. but how are they multiplying so fast? we found out that these channels are being created using artificial intelligence. a video needs a script, and with al it can be generated in seconds. then it needs a voice. ai vmcsovsk: it no - longer needs to be human. it's not quite there yet, but eventually we won't be able to tell the difference. then ai can find footage from across the internet taken from different sources and piece together the final film. and they're full of false

information like this. weather patterns have seen some remarkable changes in the past decades, but these changes might not be caused by climate change at all. here they took old footage from a nasa expert's video. they took out his voice and replaced it with al narration saying climate change isn't caused by humans, which isn't in the original. kyle hill, a science communication specialist, educator and youtuber, began to notice these videos cropping up in his feed a couple of months ago. so being a youtube creator, i always try to have my ear to the ground for what other science and technology related channels are doing. but it wasn't until one of my viewers actually pointed out that it looked like a lot of the channels they were getting recommended after watching my videos started looking very the same. these channels seem to have identified the exact right thing and how to do that thing to maximise views with the least amount of actual effort. with new ai tools, anyone can

create channels in a matter of hours, and there's hundreds of tutorials on youtube. with each video getting tens of thousands of views, these channels can mean massive pay—outs for creators, and creators aren't the only ones profiting. youtube takes nearly half of advertising revenue from every video. youtube told us that they recommend youtube kids for under—13s, which has a higher bar for videos shown. they said they're committed to removing misinformation from their platforms. they also directed us to information panels that show additional context on conspiracy—related content. we found this was only present for a few of the videos across the 50 channels. they didn't comment on advertising revenue they may receive from these videos. we reached out to some of the channels for comment. one responded saying their videos were intended for entertainment purposes and that they didn't target children. they also said the majority of their scripts were not written using ai.

you know, i think the idea that youtube and google making money off the back of adverts being served against pseudoscience, ai—generated news, that's really, that seems really unethical to me. off—screen: that video was actually all fake. i'm actually... ..really confused. i thought that was 100% real. i would've probably believed it if you hadn't told us it was fake. i think i did believe it. until a few minutes ago. i'm just shocked. i think this is an emerging threat. i think that we don't have a really clear understanding yet of how ai and ai—generated content is really impacting children's understanding. good information is probably going to be pushed out. - we will have so much - ai—generated content that you will not want to spendj the time or the effort ever sifting through it. but some of the kids were able to spot that there was something not quite right about the videos. maybe because of the, like,

voice, like the choice of... voice they had. yeah, they used, like, an ai voice. i thought was fake because, like, you could tell, like, that it was not edited properly. ai is evolving fast. as these videos continue to multiply, bad science could drown out good content. . apple has unveiled the iphone 15 without a usb seed charging | 15 without a usb seed charging port _ 15 without a usb seed charging port it is— 15 without a usb seed charging port. it is to meet eu demands for universal cable which it hopes will reduce e—waste. illegal— hopes will reduce e—waste. illegal showdown between google the us—

illegal showdown between google the us government again this week — the us government again this week. the department ofjustice believes the tech company illegally maintained its search engine dominance. google denies any wrongdoing and says the search landscape remains competitive.— search landscape remains cometitive. , . ~ , ., competitive. its market share is north of— competitive. its market share is north of 9096. _ competitive. its market share is north of 9096. it _ competitive. its market share is north of 9096. it preserves| is north of 90%. it preserves it all the time, it essentially chokes off any form of competition. chokes off any form of cometition. ~ , , ., , competition. the orkney islands is to trial two electric _ is to trial two electric ferries after receiving government funding for zero emissions vehicles. hydrofoils which lift the boat hole above the water as it gains speed have been supplied by belfast base artemis technologies for a three—year trial. and a smart airway clearance device able to perform chest physiotherapy has been given a james dyson award. created by students from the royal college of art, plural gives people with respiratory

conditions away to clear their chest at home to prevent lucas build—up in lungs. google turns 25 this month, and finds itself in a tech landscape that's changed dramatically since it was created in 1998. alasdair keane has been chatting to the company's chief sustainability officer, kate brandt, about how the company can adapt to an ai future. i've been with google now for eight years as our chief sustainability officer and during that time i think we've seen urgency around climate action only increase. and the way that we've come to think about our work is that we have a really unique opportunity to help advance action, and that's really in two ways. the first is by making information available, and the second is by moving innovation forward. and so we think about that kind of across three dimensions. the first is giving individuals helpful information that they can use in their daily lives to live more sustainably. the second is how we can support our partners and customers through climate information and data,

both for climate mitigation and an adaptation. and then, of course, it starts at home with our own commitment to sustainability and how we operate our business. but whenever big companies like google talk about sustainability, people are always quick to talk about greenwashing, that this is just kind of paying lip service to sustainability. how do you make sure it isn't? we have been very deep and sincere in our work in this space from the very beginning, and part of that is transparency. we report on our work annually. we share our progress through white papers, and we want to keep partnering — no one company can solve for this alone. over the past six months or so, there has been a real interest and awareness raised about artificial intelligence, the technology that means computers can do what at one time only humans could do. do you think ai will save us from the climate crisis? i think there are huge opportunities for al to address the climate crisis and ai as a broader suite of technology as well. and we're particularly seeing

applications of ai in both enabling individuals — so i talked about eco friendly routeing in google maps, that's made possible through the power of ai providing all the computation in the background to give you that most eco—friendly route. so we're already seeing big applications and i think we've only just scratched the surface. there is also, though, a lot of scepticism about al. people tell us they are scared of it. do you think there is more of a positive message to be shared? yeah. i mean, the way that we think about it is al has to be approached both boldly and responsibly. and so i think it's very important to look at al like any new technology — it can have risks and negative applications. we need to be thoughtful about that, but also it has such an advantage to enable people, to enable organisations to move forward. and i think especially in climate, we're seeing these really powerful applications, and notjust around climate mitigation, but also around climate adaptation. as we all know, we're already seeing the impacts of climate in our daily lives. you are surrounded by data

and information about the climate crisis all the time and people talk about climate anxiety. is that something that you face? i, you know, i read the science like from johan rockstrom, you know, in my daily work life. and it is really overwhelming. it's scary. i also have a two—year—old at home. and when you look at what these predictions about what the planet's going to look like in 2021, that's her lifetime. so i find it scary and overwhelming. but i also feel very lucky that i get to get up every day and work on it, and i'm excited to empower everyone, whether it's individuals, businesses, policymakers, with helpful information that they can use to be a part of the solution, because i think that's what helps us overcome that anxiety is taking action. wow. 25 years old. google is half my age. wow. you don't look a day older than google. thank you. move on. now, diamonds have often been marketed as a girl's best friend, but their extraction from the ground can really

damage our relationship with the environment. extracting a single one—carat diamond can mean the removal of hundreds of tonnes of earth. and that process consumes vast amounts of fresh water and fossilfuels. and it has other side—effects, which include deforestation and river pollution. but what if there was a more sustainable, maybe even a cheaper option? well, priti gupta has been to a lab in india to find out more. known as diamond city, surat has long been celebrated as the diamond polishing capital of india. the busy streets here are full of sellers peddling these precious gems. but i heard about one company that's looking to innovate

by no longer extracting diamonds from the earth, but rather growing them in a lab. green lab started as a company importing diamonds that would then be cut, shaped and polished. but a few years ago, it shifted to a process that they say was faster, cheaper and more sustainable. and as with many processes, it all starts with a single seed. butjust how do you grow a diamond? sanket, where are we? what is this room all about? so this room is our heart of green lab as it is the growing unit. so we have seeds which are 7mm, 8mm, 20mm, up to 20mm, 30mm as well. seeds are basically diamonds. it's a single—crystal diamond plate. so once the plate is placed in the reactors, we start to give it the right temperature, pressure and the right gases. these plasma reactors essentially mimic the conditions that are needed

for natural diamonds to form. a natural gas such as methane is pumped in and broken down into carbon atoms. these accumulate on top of the crystal to form a rough diamond. so rather than thousands of years, these lab—grown diamonds are grown in around six weeks. so a mined diamond rough and a lab diamond rough, once it's given to a cutting and polishing team, it doesn't matter to them whether it's mined or rough because the process of cutting is exactly the same again. so once it's cut, once it's polished, nobody can identify whether it's a mined diamond or a lab diamond. green lab says it's currently growing around 225,000 carats a month. but is anyone actually buying them? i hit the streets of surat to find out. so what are you looking for?

actually, we are looking for lab—grown diamond jewellery. she's my sister. she's gifting me. yeah. why are you gifting her? actually, this jewellery is a pocket—friendlyjewellery for us, and it will not make a big hole in my pocket. you think your sister would be happy that you're buying her something very less pricey? yes, yes, yes. nowadays, all the people are preferring this diamonds only. it looks like total real diamonds are here. oh, really? then i also feel like i should buy something. yeah. you just try it. yeah. yeah, just try it. let's try this. it's such a pretty and delicate piece. yeah, this one is simple. yeah. it looks so pretty. it's... yeah. wow. exciting. now, as tempted as i was, i was able to pull myself away without making any purchases. but companies like green lab say the price point isn't

the only attraction to prospective buyers like ritu. i see a situation where people are going to, all over the world are going to get more conscious about climate change, about extracting too many, too much from the natural, from the earth. and because of this, there may be a situation where the dependence of the industry on the naturally mined diamonds is going to be less and people will be going looking more towards lab—grown diamonds. and that is where a big boom in the lab—grown diamond industry is going to happen. well, it seems like that boom may already be under way. while lab—grown diamonds are not a new phenomenon — the knowledge and the machinery have been around for a while — the cost of producing them has halved every four years since the start of the century. the industry is already valued at $22 billion. while that's a fraction of sales of natural diamonds, the demand for these lab—grown counterparts is forecast

to nearly double by 2028. india now produces around three million lab—grown diamonds a year — that's around 15% of global production. however, a huge amount of power is needed to create a lab—grown diamond, which has led to questions about how sustainable the industry really is. now when we're talking about sustainability, you know, there are many things that people say, "oh, you use "electricity, you can't be sustainable." but here at green lab, we have fields of solar and wind. we are 100% on green energy. now, while these solar panels are, in fact, 60 miles away, green lab says the 25 megawatts that the site can produce is fed back into the national grid. but while lab—grown diamonds offer a cheaper and arguably more sustainable option, we'll have to wait a little longer to see whether the bulk of would—be consumers say, "i do." that was priti gupta in india. and that's all we've got time for. thank you for watching. see you soon.

hello there. let's take a look at the weather for the week ahead. now, it was another day of contrast again on friday with a band of heavy rain across the central belt of scotland, also the eastern areas of northern ireland. towards the north of that band of rain, some brightness towards the south, a lot of sunshine, such as here in bedfordshire. now towards the south, it is going to feel quite humid this weekend. fresher conditions further north and some rain wherever you are, courtesy on sunday of this deep area of low pressure that's going to be pushing its way further northwards and eastwards and that's going to help to spark off some heavy thundery downpours. on saturday, a bit of wet weather around as well, possibly a rumble or two of thunder in some of these showers towards

the south—west of england. our band of rain further north is gradually fragmenting. it's weakening, but still some showers, i think for the north—west of england, some brightness across scotland. best of the sunshine again towards the south—east of england and east anglia with that south—easterly wind just drawing in the humid air from the near continent. in the best of the brightness and sunshine, temperatures could get as high as 26 or even 27 degrees celsius. on saturday night, again, range of temperatures out there. it's going to feel really quite cool. i think towards the north of scotland, lows here of around three degrees celsius underneath clear skies. but towards the south—east of england, again, in that humid feeling air temperatures may not drop much below 16 or 17 degrees. so an uncomfortable night of sleep here and it stays humid in the south on sunday. the humidity, that deep area of low pressure will help to spark off the heavy thundery downpours that will gradually push further northwards and eastwards throughout the day. mostly dry in eastern scotland.

the wind turning more south—easterly as we head throughout the day. again, a range of temperatures. we're hanging onto that humid feeling air watch out for some frequent lightning strikes perhaps towards the south as we head through sunday night and into monday. but we're all going to be seeing fresher feeling conditions into next week. it's a very active week weather—wise with cold fronts pushing eastwards throughout the day on monday. behind the cold fronts, of course, fresh feeling conditions, but some sunshine ahead of that main rain band and some sunshine behind it as well. but also a rash of showers. so plenty of wet weather around on monday. we'll stay in that humid feeling air until we get to the afternoon towards the south, and the east, 21 or 22 degrees celsius. still fresh, a feeling, conditions digging in behind. and there's plenty of activity out in the atlantic as we head through the rest of the week. some of these systems tied up with the remnants of hurricane lee. let's take a look at tuesday. so at the moment, we think it's probably going to be quite a showery day. the winds will be strengthening as this second deep area of low pressure starts to approach.

temperatures will be a lot closer to the seasonal average, really the mid to the high teens. they're already feeling cooler by the time we get to tuesday. but curiously, on wednesday it could turn milder again, particularly in the south. that's because we've got that tropical feeling air coming through. deep area of low pressure out towards northern ireland, western scotland, some strong, gusty winds here and plenty of showers. these will be the days highs on wednesday, fresher again towards the north, but warmer in the south. and more showers expected on thursday and some very strong, gusty winds. the details of all of this are likely to change as we head through the week. but what we do know is that we'll see a return to those fresher feeling conditions and it will be very, very windy at times, particularly out towards the north and the west. so a very active week. westerly winds, fresher feeling air. here's the outlook for our capital cities as we head through the week. do keep an eye on the forecast.

live from washington, this is bbc news. thousands of us auto workers go on strike after contract negotiations with the nation's automakers fall apart. rescue crews in libya are working around the clock to search for the missing in flood—hit derna.

a possible end may be in sight for the years—long war between saudi arabia and yemen's houthi rebels. hello. i'm caitriona perry. you're very welcome. there is no agreement in sight in detroit as the united auto workers union is now striking against the city's big three automakers — ford, general motors, and stellantis — after parties failed to reach an consensus over labour policies. until a deal is made, targeted strikes are taking place at a general motors assembly facility in wentzville, missouri, a ford motor assembly plant in wayne, michigan and an assembly complex in toledo, ohio. it is estimated that over 12,000 workers began picketting on friday at three out of the 70 auto plants. on friday, president biden weighed in on the fight urging auto companies to share their profits with employees.