this week, nick goes down under to find out how those cogs and wheels keep an iconic building going. but is he getting a bit too hands on? you just shut the whole building down! is that..?! i'd better not touch any more! ever wondered what it takes to put on this kind of show? let's go and see some magical secret stuff. alasdair�*s going behind the scenes at europe's biggest theme park. now, what vegetation do you think might make the best climbers? mushrooms, apparently. we meet two pioneers replacing the plastic in their sport with fungi. and it's time to get up close and personal with lara here, and a technique that could help diagnose diseases like parkinson's earlier. what would you have been able to do differently? i'd have been able to go off

and do something that i wanted to do, maybe go round the world. it's one of the most instantly recognisable buildings in the world. the sydney opera house, an architectural marvel that plays host to some 2,000 shows and 11 million visitors each year. now, at 51 years old, this unesco world heritage listed performing arts space is more sustainable than ever. and today, i'm going backstage to see the innovation at work behind the scenes. this is building operations, which is where the nerve centre of the opera house is, really. wow, look at this place! around about 66,000 jobs that come through this office, which is manned 21w. as you know, that's one of the busiest arts centres in the world, which we basically don't sleep. so it's a hive of activity. this is where we control

everything from the temperature around the building, waste management, all essential services, security services, hvac, mechanical, you name it, it sort of comes out of this particular office. it's all monitored from here. the building management and control system, or bmcs for short. an interactive digital dashboard, engineered by honeywell, and one of the most crucial things for any theatre to get right — temperature. you might have an audience that, you know, we try to maintain 22.5, but if we have a comedian come in, they might want it at 19 degrees. i'm actually surprised by how much it's varying. do people in better seats get better temperatures? is it chilly at the back? it's not chilly at the back, erm... jokes aside, the house has recently been awarded with the highest six—star performance certification by green building council australia and recognition as a global leader in sustainable practice. that's partly down to its fresh

focus on air quality. if we do have high pollution levels, we can close down the amount of outside air that we're bringing into the theatre. so, as you can imagine, when we were going through those devastating bushfires, we were able to actually control the system, to allow low levels of air to be able to come into the venues, enough to be able to maintain the system, but to be able to keep the conditions right for the audience and the artists that are performing onstage. 0ver1,400 different sensors are scattered all around the house, feeding live data back to base. when we are operating in a comfortable, better air quality space, we are more productive and even the facility wear and tear reduces greatly. so what the technology is really doing is it's looking at individual spaces every 15 minutes, and it's trying to optimise the energy consumption of that space. ah, so that's the temperature there, that comes out. that's correct. uh—oh, i'vejust done something there. that's all right. you just shut the whole building down. is that. . ?! i'd better not touch any more!

time to move on and see some less sensitive instruments. yeah, these'll do. at any one time, the opera house can have up to 20,000 visitors. so keeping them all cool is a big challenge, because as soon as they arrive, their body heat naturally warms up the venue. so its original engineers thought up a solution using what's right on their doorstep. what we do is we take sea water in from the sydney harbour. they run around a series of hundreds of pipes, um, around our domestic water. so that's how we take the temperature of our domestic water down, which in turn allows us to save energy, so we don't actually have to use electricity to be able to do that. we can actually use our sea water, which is one of the beauty ofjust being on the sydney harbour. being exposed to the elements has its disadvantages, especially when it comes to outdoor concerts. but the smart system is helping here too. when wind speed gets up to certain levels, it activates a safety plan, for example, removing things

off tables and knowing when to hold a show oran event, ora performer coming onstage. the software has helped the house reduce its water and energy use by 20% in the last five years, and is on a mission to become carbon positive by the end of the decade. six star is normally - something you would give to a new build, right? where you can use all- of the latest technologies. but we're the opera house. you can't put a solar. panel on the roof here. we're a world heritage listed building. - technologies way ahead| of their time still is used today that was original to this building. - and that's because its architect, jorn utzon, designed with sustainability in mind. even the tiles are self—cleaning. the spherical design of the structure allows for good drainage, and the only thing that washes it is the rain. every five years, each tile is manually inspected and digitally catalogued — all 1,555,000 of them.

that's a lot of tiles. so that's a lot of inspections that we need to do around the building and software like this allows us to actually strip the building down and monitor. so if i had this sort of software ten years ago, i would know that, you know, the materials i use, i'd be able to monitor the health of the building and really have a data log for, you know, when i leave the opera house, the next person who takes myjob, they'll know how i've repaired it. so this sort of information will help the longevity of the building continue. how do you tackle the challenge of retrofitting this heritage building? we feel a great sense of responsibility to not just care for this place and to treasure and renew this building for future generations, but we also talk about ourselves as custodians. you know, we all have a temporary existence, and the time that we have as people that work and look after this place is really significant.

i'm at disneyland paris, where every night hundreds of drones take to the sky to entertain crowds of people looking on from below. these kinds of shows are becoming a regularfeature at festivals, new year celebrations and sports events all over the world. have you ever seen a drone show in the sky and wondered, how do they do that? we're going to find out. and it's a journey that's going to take us behind the scenes of the inner workings of this theme park, and meet some of those bringing the magic to life. so for this show, we have a total of 519 drones, 500 doing standard drones and 19 drones which are carrying pyrotechnics, so smoke effects, or sparklers, or fountain effects, whichjust add a little bit of extra magic during the show. but our trip behind the scenes here started much earlier

in the day, as the team get ready for the big show at the end of the night. hey, alasdair, you found me! 0k? here we are. let's go and see some magical secret stuff. so here we go. these are the drones in question. 0bviously these ones are in the workshop. so this is where dronisos maintains all the drones that we have every night on the show. so it'sjust like a commercial aircraft, almost. they do a pre—flight check. they check the motors, they check the antennas, the communication, the lights, everything is checked. and if there's any issue with a specific drone, they just take out that drone and they put in another drone that's ready to go. the drone they use has been specially adapted for this use. it weighsjust 600g,

with an led light on the front and a large antenna. the tech and the software behind it is made by french company dronisos. hi. hello. bonjour. this is the drone. and so, how do you get them to stay in the right place in the sky? well, everything is pre—programmed. we use gps. we use the wi—fi as well. we have a different way of communicating with the drones. and then you have 500 drones all moving in sync together. yes, and you have the drones that are lit on, that you can see. but of course, while you have a character or a figure in the sky, some other drones are off and are travelling to their next location. how do they not crash? camille laughs how do they know where to go and be in the right place? they are smart! these are smart drones and this software that we have developed has several layers of security and intelligence.

so every single drone is completely ignorant to what it has to do prior to the show. if it's placed in a specific point on the take—off zone, it knows it's number 312. and if that one's placed somewhere else, that's number 378. but that's their one role and that's all that they do. they take off. they do their show. this show is on every night of the year, weather—dependent. that's a lot of pressure that this tech is under, to be working fully and up in the sky. absolutely. and what was developed for this show was something called hot swap. if a drone has a problem with a motor or a battery or anything that happens, so it'll either come home or it'll literally go straight down. but if it does go straight down, there's a drone that's waiting to take its place. drones are flying 1.50 metres apart. so that drone has to navigate through this sea of drones in the sky, and then parks up and takes over and runs the show in its place, which is very, very clever. this is the control room. so this is where all of the

show aspects are controlled. this is michael. michael. bonjour. he's the stage manager. he's in charge of all the technicians for the show. at this time of night, a lot of people start looking up at the sky because the weather is really important here. rain is a really big factor because it's in the preparation time. it takes two hours for them to install all the drones, do all the checking, everything that we spoke about. then of course, there's the wind. so prior to the show, we set...they send up three drones, three drones that fly up to, well, like 110m, another one at 70 and another one at 40m. and they, each of these drones has a black box on it, just like an aircraft. the drones go up there, they take the weather, they see if there's, like, a gust and what the average is and what that wind speed at those different heights. and then that decision is made. the stage manager then says, yes, no, and that decision is taken five minutes before the show. so we really, really try to the last moment... it's very close to the line.

..to be able to do it, it really is close to the wire. weather is the big limiting factor of this kind of technology. despite that, drone shows are fast becoming a fixture of events all around the globe. there's no denying their potential to entertain. there's a trend lately to put more drones in the shows. you know, it's not a matter of numbers. it's really a matter of experience. and maybe the drones tomorrow could react to what the audience is doing. so this is something that i really want to see. the future is endless, is all i can say, really, because, you know, we're only limited by aerospace and imagination. well, that was amazing. and with these drone shows happening all over the world now, i can't wait to see my next one.

time for a look at this week's tech news. roadblocks has announced it will block under 13 is from directly messaging of the players unless they have permission from a verified parent or guardian —— roblox. it's the most popular gaming platform for eight to 12 —year—olds in the uk. but it has been urged to improve efforts to safeguard children. parents will be able to view and manage their account, including seeing their list of online friends and setting daily limits on playtime. a team at liverpooljohn moores university has created a digital avatar based on a reconstruction of richard iii�*s head. the english king's face has a slightly arched nose and a prominent chin. experts were also able to determine how we may have spoken by examining handwriting on the spelling of words in mediaeval literature. i determined to offer our dearest firstborn son, edward. and finally, the brown bear who

had i've setting brain surgery six weeks ago is making a remarkable recovery, according to keepers at the wild trust. surgeons fitted a stent into his brain, to help drain excess fluid which was believed to be causing the bear debilitating seizures. keepers say the two—year—old cub is almost back to his normal self. ok, let's talk about climbing now. now, this is a sport that's gaining popularity after featuring at the olympics. i've tried it. it's fun, but it's hard. but now some of the sport's enthusiasts are starting to ask about the environmental impact of their beloved activity. we spoke to two inventors based at motionlab in berlin, which is a hardtech hub. now, they're developing a new kind of climbing hold. those are those little blocks that you put your feet and hands in to hoist yourself up the wall. the team behind this project,

which is still in its early days, says it's an eco—friendly alternative to the typical plastic climbing holds. climbers are the ones who are really trying to protect the environment. we care for nature. we want to bring sustainable alternatives for the climbing industry because it's a community that actually cares about the environment. i love climbing, it's kind of therapy for me. so it's you and the wall and that's it. hi, my name is manuela. my name is marta. even though we are architects, one of our really big passions is to climb. every time you go to a boulder club or even if you go outdoor climbing, you go with a group. you have this community feeling. it's fun. someone's supporting you there, cheering you up, not to fall. there's a lot of people eager to do this sport, which is amazing, but that means that a lot more gyms are opening every day.

most of the equipment is relying on plastics, and this leads to a massive consumption of climbing holds, which means there is a massive amount of plastic waste. we really want to make like a whole change in the whole industry because it's needed, and the only way to push forward is actually make it yourself. we're using mycelium, and it's actually the root of mushrooms, to develop a new material. mycelium in rye. and it's going to be the food that we are going to put into our substrate. 0ur secret recipe at the moment. and this is how it looks like once the mycelium has grown inside. so the way we get mushrooms into climbing holds, the whole process basically starts with taking a sample of the mushroom we want to use. we grow that in a special preparation called agar,

where you let the mycelium of this mushroom grow. then you transfer this to a first substrate that is a kind of food for the mushroom. you let it grow. you transfer this to a mould. in our case, what we are doing is we are 3d printing our moulds with either recyclable or biodegradable filament. so a small mould for a foothold. and then we're going to transfer some of our mycelium into it and let it grow. so we will put this in our growing tent for five days and the mycelium will grow inside. and then we will have a material that it will start looking like this. you see here all the substrate is combined together with the mycelium, which is the white part. and i will show you the next step... ..which is, after letting it grow, we will heat it up and the material will turn into something like this.

and you can hear... hollow rapping ..now it's strong. it's hard compared to how it was before. so now we are going to drill some holes. so we are going to be able to put this into the wall afterwards. once you dry it out there's no problem with it. in the beginning people were a bit sceptical about this application for the materials. so that's where we come in and try to push it and show that if you have a better recipe, you can make it stronger. and then if you have a proper coating or another material to combine it with, then you can have actually a really strong material that could be applied for the climbing holds. it's not about bringing just a product, it's also making a statement that we need to do something better for the environment. and right now we have a product which is 98% made out of mycelium, which is completely bio—based and can be recyclable. we are almost there to be perfect.

so, yeah, stay tuned because they will come out soon. it's often said that the eyes are the window to the soul, but throw in a spot of ai and there's so much more that can be seen in them. an estimated 20 million eye tests take place in the uk every year — vital for getting the right specs, but these increasingly available retinal scans could one day delve deeper into your health, too. they can already identify signs of conditions that can lead to blindness. but now, research at ucl institute of ophthalmology and moorfields eye hospital is investigating whether ai might help us pick up other diseases this way too. and it's created a whole new potential field of diagnostics

with its own name. oculomics. and this is a new term that we've coined just to describe this ability to use the eye as a window to the rest of the body. just from looking at a retinal photograph, with the retinas like the nerve tissue at the back of the eye, just from looking at that you can predict their weight, you can predict their blood pressure. but it's even more impressive than that. there are indications that scans can predict signs of parkinson's disease on average seven years earlier than a regular diagnosis. i went to the doctor and i said, i don't feel very well. she sent me off to see the heart surgeon and so they had my heart done. and for a year and a half i wasted the time i could have been diagnosed. perfect, angela. if you just keep your- forehead against the bar. angela has parkinson's. she had to wait years for a diagnosis, but if technology like this had been used, it may have been spotted

earlier as she was already being treated by professor pearse for macular degeneration. what would you have been able to do differently? i would have been able to go to speech therapy longer, earlier. i'd have been able to go off and do something that i wanted to do, maybe go around the world, but i wouldn't go like this. um, and just generally enjoying my life a bit better. plan it. and this is how simple a scan to potentially be able to find out all of that actually is. you'll see a bright blue light. i just want you to look straight into that bright blue light. so, lara, we're looking at your scans right here, and this looks completely healthy and normal. these are the individual layers of the retina that we can see at the back of the eye. the inner layers go straight to the brain. and so often diseases that affect the brain will turn up right here at the front of the retina.

the layers shown by this equipment are one micron thick. that's a thousandth of a millimetre. subtle changes are hard to spot, and that's why you need a large set of data to compare. in this case, two million anonymized eye scans from moorfields and of course, the huge power of ai. and if other data sets are linked, then of course the possibilities could become bigger and bigger. one of the things that we've been able to do is take all the data at moorfields eye hospital, and we've been able to link it with national nhs databases. and so we can see that if someone has had an eye test done in moorfields and had one of these retinal scans done, but if they've moved to grimsby and had a heart attack or moved to liverpool and had a stroke or any systemic disease, because we have this national linkage, we've got the perfect data set to be able to train and develop these ai systems. if we can begin to pick up

systemic diseases like this when you go to an eye test, that has massive implications for screening and prediction of disease. the team is now conducting further trials to see whether oculomics and the power of ai can predict strokes, heart attacks, inflammatory bowel disease, lung problems and more. how do you feel about al? i feel it's the way forward and we'd be very stupid to ignore it. i know it's got some bad press, but most of it is good press. and in a way, if it helps you get a diagnosis earlier and get the right treatment and make you sort of better, what's to not like? and hopefully for this sort of use, many others might agree with angela. parkinson's and the other diseases that could become identifiable like this affects so many. and early diagnosis can make a huge difference to treatment and outcome. well, that's all we've

got time for this week. thanks for watching and we'll be back soon. hello there. hello there. for most of us, it's been for most of us, it's been a dry but cold day today a dry but cold day today after that widespread frost. after that widespread frost. but things over the next few but things over the next few days are going to change. days are going to change. temperatures are temperatures are going to be rising. going to be rising. the cold air that we've had the cold air that we've had underneath the high pressure underneath the high pressure is getting squeezed away, is getting squeezed away, weather fronts just waiting weather fronts just waiting to bring some rain to bring some rain in from the west. in from the west. but this evening, there may east, temperatures will have but this evening, there may well be an early frost well be an early frost across eastern scotland, across eastern scotland, the midlands and eastern parts the midlands and eastern parts of england, where we've got of england, where we've got clearer skies and also lighter clearer skies and also lighter winds. winds. but temperatures but temperatures will rise overnight. will rise overnight. in the west, we've got in the west, we've got most of the cloud. most of the cloud. the rain that was in northern the rain that was in northern ireland will head its way up ireland will head its way up towards northernmost parts towards northernmost parts of scotland, and temperatures of scotland, and temperatures by the end of the night by the end of the night

in western areas may well be in western areas may well be in double figures, and further in double figures, and further east, temperatures will have lifted above freezing by the morning. still a chilly start here, mind you, but for many central and eastern parts of england and perhaps eastern scotland, should be a dry day with some sunshine. stronger southerly breezes out to the west, where the cloud will thicken to bring rain back into northern ireland

so quite a change for the eastern side of the uk. there is a bit of rain just waiting in the wings out to the west. this weather front will push some wet weather eastwards on saturday night. that rain soon clears away from scotland, but we'll see this rain moving into england and wales, so much more unsettled, i think, on sunday. the rain followed by some sunshine but also some showers. sunday, of course, is the first day of meteorological winter, but it's not really going to feel particularly wintry at all. it will be a mild day on sunday, temperatures again around 13 celsius. but that mild weather is unlikely to last into monday. the wind direction changes. instead, we get a northerly wind, and that will drop the temperatures during the day.

live from singapore, this is bbc news. a fresh surge of russian attacks on ukraine as president putin threatens to hit the capital kyiv with moscow's new ballistic missile. the ceasefire between israel and hezbollah is holding despite reports of violations and in a world first,

australia votes for a sweeping ban on social media for children under 16. welcome to newsday, i'm katie silver. more than a million people are without power after russia's strikes on ukraine's power grid on wednesday night. russian forces launched 90 missiles and 100 drones in an attack that lasted for more than nine hours, according to kyiv�*s military administration. ukrainian emergency workers are servicing at least 1a affected regions — including kyiv, odesa, kharkiv, and sumy. authorities say people could be without electricity for days. the attack is a massive blow to ukraine's energy system which is crucial to both frontline troops and civilians as winter approaches. during a visit to kazakhstan on thursday, russian president vladimir putin said the strikes were in response to ukraine

using american and british long range missiles to hit