so, this is the velodrome? this is it _ this is where i spent 20 years of my life. i this week, alasdair�*s talking wheels with cycling legend sir chris hoy. we're watching how wind is helping wheelchair racers. i think building the chair around you and your needs is incredibly important. and we whip up a chat with the new voice and face of indiana jones. the thing that is universal is that there is somewhere in all of us an adventurer. so, this is the velodrome? this is it. this is where i spent

20 years of my life. i've raced the commonwealth games here in 2002, world champs in �*96, 2000, 2008. i've become world champion here, commonwealth champion. yeah, loads of great memories. but also my place of work. i used to come here five days a week, you know, 50 weeks of the year. so it's... so many memories, so many people, so many friendships. so, yeah, always have a nice, warm feeling when i come back to the velodrome. it's a big commitment, being a champion? it is, but at the heart of it, you're doing something you love, you know? it's a passion. and it... when i was 13—14 and i first rode on the track at meadowbank in edinburgh, never could've thought that one day, you know, it'd become a careerfor me and i would go on to win lots of medals. it's that passion and determination that's helped take sir chris hoy to the top of the podium many times, at both the olympics and world championships. in his career spanning many years, he's seen

technology shift in his sport. obviously, the bikes evolve and the science behind performance and the analysis and... aerodynamics is the biggest one that's evolved cycling over the last ten years. but at the heart of it, its human beings and it's personalities and it's passion for sport. and i love the science, don't get me wrong. i mean, i did my degree in sports science and i love the science, the underpinning theory behind performance. but aside from all that, it's the human element that is the most fascinating, i think — the psychology. and, yeah, as i said, the passion for sport. sir chris has described this year as his toughest. he's spoken openly about his health and terminal cancer diagnosis. but through it all, he's continued working, including backing a clip—on bit of tech that can make any bike an e—bike. this has been a huge project, you know, over the last four years, but more than ever, it's great to have something exciting to look forward to.

i mean, you are sir chris hoy. you are known for cycling under your own power. people might be surprised that you're backing an e—bike. yeah, i — to be brutally honest, when i very first... like, 15 years ago, when i heard about e—bikes, i remember thinking, you know, "the whole point of cycling is you're using your body to propel the bike. surely that's the point of it? it's exercise, its good for your legs and your lungs." and then i tried an e—bike the very first time, and i got it. it's not like sitting on a scooter and turning a throttle and you're a passenger. an e—bike is a pedal assist. and they're very different to the bikes that you might see delivering pizzas or whatever up and down high streets. that's a very different thing altogether. these are pedal assist. they�* re regulated to 16mph. you know, they're safe. these are a very different proposition. but when you ride one, you get it. you go, "actually, you still have to pedal. you still get exercise." but you can choose how much effort you want to put through the pedals. so, if you do want, you know,

to work a bit harder, you can. but if you don't, you get that extra little boost. so i think it makes people want to ride their bikes more frequently. athlete investing is now a huge trend in all sorts of different products and technology. what is your involvement in this? are you just a kind of famous name behind a product, or are you more involved? ithink... well, i was there... i was the first person to get on board and to become a shareholder and to back it — because i believed in it, you know? when you get on the bike and you try it, it is a eureka moment. and i thought, "this is going to be huge." i feel as well i've played a small role in developing the characteristic of how the unit works, and giving feedback from a cyclist�*s perspective on the different power modes, on, you know, the shape of it, the clearance — all the things that are actually important in terms of the cycling experience. i've tried to help them with that. wahey! we're in a velodrome, which is of course where you competed and raced and trained all that time.

the world of technology is also changing sport. do you still recognise cycling as it was when you were competing in places like this? oh, 100%. i mean, i think science... well, it's certainly helped my career, and probably because when i first started cycling seriously, things were very... you know, it was very old—fashioned and it was a very traditional sport. but technology has revolutionised the sport. and ifind it fascinating — and i embrace it, too. i love the data. i used to love the data when i was riding. and i loved the numbers. and i could finish a session knowing that i'd produced a new personal best. a lot of the big nations, you know, they had an advantage with big budgets, professional teams. but now i think, yeah, a talented individual can compete at the top level because there's so many things you can buy to help you assess your performance and make the right training choices. but again, ultimately, it comes down to that

individual and how hard they can turn those pedals. it's as simple as that. and that kind of information can also be available to fans, and it increases people's watching of the sport, too. yeah, so, yeah, one of the... that's a really good point. a lot of the new races now, the riders will have their, you know, heart monitor on, they have power cranks on. and the real—time data can be projected onto apps. so the fans can watch the athletes and see. and you look at these athletes walking onto the track and sitting there looking confident and composed. and you think, "0h, he looks completely relaxed." and you look at his heart rate and think, "he's bluffing." you know, it's fascinating — the insights you can get. sport will always be about people. and you can have all the assistance, you can have all the analysis and everything that goes with it — i think that's great because it moves the sport on — but at the heart of it, you still have to have a person who can step up on that line, deal with the nerves, decide how they're going to race and actually finish the job off, if you like. you can go so far, but you need that human element to do the last bit.

this is melanie woods. a 30—year—old wheelchair racer and paralympian from scotland. i started racing maybe about five years ago. i was unfortunately in an accident where i suffered a spinal injury, which meant that i was now a wheelchair user. and at that point, i was kind of looking at sport and thinking, you know, what would it look like for me now? melanie had been a pe teacher before she was hit by a car whilst out cycling, leaving her paralysed from the waist down. but her background in sport spurred on a determination to get active again, so she joined a local athletics club. when i first started, i was... yeah, absolutely no talent or superstar. in fact, it was really difficult to even get around one lap of the track. since 2018, melanie has competed at two

paralympic games and several world championships, putting her in a unique place to inform new research from loughborough university. the team are using a wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of wheelchair racing. one key area is an athlete's body position in their chairs while racing. we have beside me a wind tunnel and the working section with a wheelchair mounted to it. so, it's mounted to what we call a balance. so it's essentially like a giant set of weighing scales, but instead ofjust weighing up and down like the scales you have at home, it'll measure forwards and backwards, side to side, as well as up and down. so it allows us to measure all of the forces that are acting on that chair when we turn the wind on. so, what kind of things will mel be doing in the wind tunnel? if we see an athlete in motion, of course, its dynamic, they're not holding particular positions. but in orderfor us to match it up with some computer simulations, we choose three positions. so we have catch, release and recovery, which are three

key parts of the driving motion that a wheelchair athlete would be performing as part of their propulsion. we've identified those three as key for drag. so, by asking mel to hold those positions, we're able to get really repeatable measurements. melanie is performing the catch pose here — a snapshot of how she would look when pushing her chair�*s wheels during a race. dan and his team must find out whether this green outline of mel's body matches that in the 3d simulations. when a wheelchair athlete is racing, the biggest force that they're going to encounter is that wind resistance. so, we can feel this ourselves on a windy day and we can feel the force that we have to put in to overcome that. so, for us, it's really important to understand how that force — where that force comes from and any changes that we can make to try and reduce that force,

and allow the athlete to ultimately perform faster. the project is the work of phd student will dixon, who's showing me just how wind hits melanie�*s body and chair. if i bring it down, see how it attaches over her helmet? i and then where it's . really flapping about, that's where there's lots of turbulence. i so that's where it's - separating from her body. if i bring it, like, across — like, close to her arm — l you can see that it's attached to her arm _ but then behind there, i it's shedding and there's lots of wake, a lot - of turbulence and that. my backgrounds in vehicle aerodynamics, and actually a vehicle... once we've designed those surfaces, it's the same whether you're driving it or i'm driving it. it performs the same aerodynamically. wheelchair racing and cycling and many sports are completely different, so we work with wheelchair manufacturers to allow development of the equipment itself. but also, we can inform the athlete to hold a slightly different position or even just update. if they have a preferred position, we can tell them what that costs,

actually, in terms of track time and aerodynamic drag. some of the data gathered will apply to melanie only, but the idea is to gather as much information in how to realistically position an athlete in the catch, release and recovery positions, ultimately broadening the knowledge of wheelchair racing. there's so little research into our sport, and i think that can limit the development of us moving forward with technology and getting faster. the position that you're in in the chair is, like, the most significant part, and i think building the chair around you and your needs is incredibly important. it will take months before results from the project are fully analysed, but dan tells me the preliminary findings are positive and that those three key positions could provide a framework to helping athletes get faster in their sport. the research that they're doing into the aerodynamics and how your position affects that will hopefully help them come out with some kind of guidelines or some influence

on what position you choose to be in. and i think, yeah, that'll be really helpful. time for a look at this you weak�*s tech news. google has unveiled a new chip called willow moore, which it claims takes five minutes to solve a problem that would currently take the world's pestis supercomputers tend to 7 billion years to complete. the chip is the latest development in a field known as quantum computing, where physicals of particle physics test quantum physics are used to create a powerful computer stuff normally computers are operating on the logic of zeros and ones. operating on the logic of zeros and om— and ones. and then when it replaces — and ones. and then when it replaces it _ and ones. and then when it replaces it with _ and ones. and then when it replaces it with quantum i replaces it with quantum physics, you get a more powerful set of operations. however, experts say that willow is a largely experiment

will device, meaning a quantum computer powerful enough to solve a wide range of real—world problems is still years away. the world's first large production of carbon fibre enriched with graphene will be led by a uk company in saudi arabia. scientists describe graphene as a nano material which is 200 times stronger than steel. it's hoped it'll be used to build eeco cities in the desert. and finally, tesla's optimists humanoid robot has been out for a walk this week — and even managed to avoid a fall after a little slip on a steep slope. artificial intelligence is set to transform our workplaces. but how ready is our workforce for this rapidly changing technology? and what impact will it have on jobs right now and jobs in the future? on one hand, some commentators believe it will simply wipe out many roles, while others believe it will revolutionise

the way that we work. to find out more, i've been meeting people working in different fields of ai. hi, i'm teo, and i'm an ai prompt engineer at autogenai. prompt engineering is finding a way to communicate with al models using natural language. it's a way for everyone to be able to talk to ai, and it means that it's accessible to everybody. so, autogenai builds a solution using linguistic engineering and machine learning for people who are writing bids, tenders and proposals. some people have referred to ai in very grandiose terms, saying it's almost like it's an industrial revolution, you know? i mean, do you feel that it's going to have that level of impact on roles? i do think it will have that big of an impact. it's changing the way we communicate with each other. that we think about things. it's changing our entire process. i think that al won't take your job, but somebody who knows how to use ai might take yourjob.

i think we've really got to learn how to use these tools, and if we stay behind the curve, then we will get left behind. this is the london office of google deepmind. william isaac is a principal scientist here. he focuses on the field of ai ethics. ai, it will have the capacity to have a kind of... transformative both in innovation and kind of economic impacts, you know? but for the individuals, i think we're going to see a spectrum. and we'll see areas where, you know, we'll have ai kind of augment existing tasks and really kind of, you know, take away some of the areas that people just find a bit like drudgery right now. but then there'll be other areas where it'll be empowering, there will be areas where it will help kind of enhance your ability to do things well. i think the most important part is that there's a dialogue about it. william believes the ultimate goal is an ai which is safe, useful and able to represent

everyone. what's the ethics behind building ai models which maybe just reflect our own biases, our own political beliefs, our own social beliefs? ideally, you want ai systems that are representative — just full stop — that they are able to actually represent a range of views — and by default, they do. they are trained on the internet and the data that's underneath it, and it can actually represent a range of views. i'm matthew schwartz. i'm a principal security engineer for amazon web services' generative ai red team _ for others working in al, they are troublemakers. myjob is to break amazon's generative ai technologies so real—world attackers can't. is it like ethical hacking? would that be a way to describe it? you definitely could call it ethical hacking. amazon pays myself and a number of other members on the team to try and compromise our systems before they go out. i use alto assist me in many of the tasks that i do. to me, it's really refreshing to oversee a new technology

that's rapidly evolving. does that give us some challenges? yes — but that's also the exciting part, right? the exciting part is, how do i test this new technology? so, are we preparing our workforce for this changing landscape? i'm mirella lapata. i'm a professor of natural language processing - at the school of informatics i at the university of edinburgh. all kids at every school - in the whole country should at least know to program a little bit. _ they would need to understand what the technology— can and cannot do. ai is not going i to steal ourjobs. we have to work with ai| to make ourjobs better. but right now, the problem is there is a mismatch. - there is al and there - is the currentjobs, and they are not going together. a lot of people say. that, you know, it will revolutionise the workplace. the reality is that it hasn't. yet and it will not be instant. ai in the workplace will take | a little bit of time, and there is good reasons for this.

first of all, ai is not cheap. and then you have the actual. people who used to do the job, and now they're supposed to do it with m — they don't know how to do this. they need to be trained. how do we prepare people for these new emerging jobs in aland in technology? at the moment, we don't have enough ai experts. i so please do study computer science. | that's what you need to do. or study ethics or study law. these are important professions| and will become more important as ai matures and is adopted more and more. _ and i would definitely. not discourage people. this is a very exciting field. you get to play with cool . technology and influence it and, in fact, in the end, i possibly change the world. joel from the last of us, booker from bioshock infinite and samuel drake from uncharted

— three massive video game characters, one thing in common — they're all played by the same actor, troy baker. now he's adding one more, and possibly the most iconic of them all — indiana jones. regardless of your familiarity with this character or this ip, the thing that is universal is that there is somewhere in all of us an adventurer. and that is something that everybody can relate to. and what all of us have tried to make over the last almost four years of making this game is something that speaks to that adventurous spirit. our whole thing is turning you into indiana jones, to bring out the adventurer in you. we have to make haste. ijust saw father ventura with a blackshirt on his way to the castello. people will have probably worked it out from the hat and from the jacket, but you are playing indiana jones. what's it like stepping into such an iconic role? i actually brought this from home, by the way. this is mine.

it's going to sound so cheesy, but it's the truth. it's truly a dream come true. i said, "who is father ventura?" we call him the man in black. a friend of mussolini. before i ever even thought about being an actor or working in games, this is a character that i've looked up to my whole life. and so, so much so that i thought it was impossible for me to play it, because when i was offered the role, i was like, "no," and i turned it down because i was scared. indiana jones and the great circle tells a new story for indy — on pc and xbox first. a playstation 5 version's coming out next year — something microsoft originally said wouldn't happen. and, while it might look like harrison ford here, the voice and face and body movements are all troy's. how do you see the landscape

as being different now from when you first started? i think that there are more opportunities for more actors from all walks to be in this. and the reason why i love games is because, again, it's this partnership between the player and the actor — we both get to inhabit this role. and i believe that these are empathy machines. i believe that there is... there's nothing like thinking about a character, and then i can watch that character and they can have this beautiful, dramatic, emotive moment, and then all of a sudden, i move that left stick and that character moves. and now i have agency and control in what they're doing in this environment — in my choice! this is the evolution of the story, is, how can i let you know what my experience has been? and if i can tell you what my experience is — and more so, you can experience what my experience has been — well, now we have empathy. and i think that if we were

able to walk in each other�*s shoesjust a little bit, might be a little bit kinder. it sounds, you know, sunshine and rainbows, but i think the world would be a better place. actors have never played more of a role bringing their virtual characters to life, and big global launches are so big now, they can make stars of their heroes and villains. this time, that includes marios gavrilis and his new villain, voss. sin! part of my work was to create a new character from scratch but at the same time remain in the context and the tone of the realm of indiana jones. it's not rocket science. you can't reinvent the thing, right? you have to kind of match the tone of it. but it was a lot of fun, man — i can tell you that. you know, very often, we're referred to as voice actors. what we're actually doing with the p—cap

thing is full—on acting. this is something people forget. like, we're notjust doing the voice — it's the entire body, it's the entire... it's the entirety of our performance that's being captured. what do you make of this kind of movement for actors in games having much more of a celebrity status than they might have in the past? you've got to understand, this is a big industry. so, somebody like troy baker, he is up there — deservedly so. so, he built up his credits over the years, you know, playing some of the most remarkable characters in gaming history. this whole celebrity thing... kind of like proof of concept is that they're asking a—listers from hollywood, "play in games" — norman reedus and keanu reeves, all these guys. it's no coincidence. i think the gaming market has huge potential, and this isjust the beginning. and that's it from indy and from us for this week. thanks for watching and we will see you soon.

nice view. for most of the day, friday for many of you will have been a cloudy, rather grey, damp kind of day with some drizzle around a bit of mist. but towards the end of friday, we started to get some sunnier breaks coming into the highlands of scotland, bit of sunshine on the horizon. those brighter skies to be found behind this cold front, which at the moment is pushing its way southwards. it will eventually bring much sunnier weather, at least for a time, to all parts of the uk. now, right now, we've still got extensive cloud across england and wales, still with those misty conditions, bit of hill fog and quite extensive drizzle. but the clearer air is continuing to work down

across northern areas. for many of us, saturday morning starting off on a frost—free note but cold. but there will be some frost patches into scotland. here's your saturday morning, then — starting on a cloudy note for southern england and east anglia, still with some drizzle and mist. that clears through as our cold front finally pushes southwards, followed by sunshine for a time. however, into the afternoon, we'll see things cloud over once again for scotland and northern ireland, with a bit of rain pushing in here. it will eventually turn quite mild — ii in stornoway — whereas eastern scotland, eastern england staying on the chilly side, temperatures 6—8 degrees. saturday night, then, one of those nights where temperatures will actually rise through the night as milder south—westerly winds start to blow in, and so they will bring a completely different kind of weather feel for the second half of the weekend. it's going to be a much milder day. there will be a lot of cloud around at times, a few breaks in the cloud, a bit of hazy sunshine here and there. but for the highlands of scotland, we start to see a band of heavy and persistent rain move in. now, it will be a much milder day than we've been used

to pretty much all week, temperatures around 12—13 celsius. and this mild weather continues into monday, again with extensive cloud around, just a few breaks in the cloud, bit of hazy sunshine for some, whereas for the highlands, we've got more rain in the forecast. and that rain actually continues into tuesday. we'll need to be watchful of that. there could be some localised surface water flooding building in early next week due to that persistent rain. so a mild first half to the week, but often quite cloudy with some patches of rain coming and going. really, from the second half of the week and into the following weekend, we see big changes in temperatures from one day to the next. one day will be mild, then colder air comes in, then mild again, then it turns colder again. all the while, it looks like the weather pattern's going to stay pretty unsettled in the run—up to christmas.

live from washington, this is bbc news. syrians take to the streets to celebrate the downfall of the assad regime as rebel leaders urge people to express joy. donald trump says "syria is not our fight". we examine what impact his new administration might have on the region.

hello, i'm carl nasman. welcome to this special half—hour programme on syria. we'll look at the experiences of people in the country and ask what the fall of bashar al—assad's government means for the middle east. and we'll consider what the return of donald trump to the white house means for a syria witnessing unprecedented change. first, look at what has really been an extraordinary until last weekend unthinkable day across syria to mark the downfall of the former president al—assad. take a look at these pictures. people marking the end of more than 50 years of his family's grip on the country. tens of thousands of syrians have taken to the streets to celebrate their newfound freedoms. this was the scene in syria's third largest city, horns,

on what they are calling "victory friday," while this