anti—fog sunglasses? talking of headwear, here's 3 sd printerfit for a queen. and when is elephant ivory not from an elephant? when it's from a 10,000—year—old fossil. chris has the tech to tell the difference. if you were just handed that, could you tell? no. not immediately. yep. it's going to be a mammoth show. martin: those of us who wear glasses know exactly how annoying it can be when they fog up.

everything goes somewhere... so here comes the technical bit. condensation occurs when water vapour from your sweat, breath or the environment around you lands on a cold surface. as it cools, it changes into tiny drops of liquid, forming a film that looks a bit like fog. so how do you stop this? you could use a spray or a lens cloth. this could help for a little while, but what if there was a more permanent solution? lenses are relatively cool compared to your breath, especially when the outside air is cold. so in order to see things properly, we need to go outside. we're heading to the stunning alps to meet the team from eth zurich to get hands—on

with their glasses. this solar—powered innovation aims to end fogged—up lenses... 0k. ..and we're here to see it in action. traditionally, surfaces are coated with water—attracting molecules, which attracts an even spread of condensation. this is how regular anti—fogging systems work. this new method heats the surface, preventing condensation from humidity forming in the first place. 50% of the sunlight is invisible, and we're not seeing it with our human eye — it's in the infrared — and we designed a coating that absorbs this infrared energy, heats up the surface, and thereby can prevent fog. and the whole mission or vision behind our coating is actually to make something that's durable and in comparison to existing anti—fog solutions, which you always have to, you know, reapply, you use your plastic bottles, and we provide a durable one—shot solution that lasts forever. so this coating absorbs

radiation, but how do you ensure that it's absorbing enough radiation but not too much heat where it's impractical? yeah, it's a subtle balance. obviously the energy is limited to a certain extent, so you cannot heat up to 100 degrees celsius, but we can tune actually how much infrared our coating absorbs and thereby also change the effect on the temperature. the coating is extremely thin, it stays perfectly clear, but, behind the scenes, it's busy warming up to block fog. no fog — no fuss. but how does it work, you ask? well, it's all in the layers. now, picture this coating as a burger. the patty in the middle contains gold and has the importantjob of soaking up all that radiation. the bun around it boosts the absorption, keeping the precious metal safe from wearing out. tasty, right? maybe we should have made burgers rather than muffins. oh, well. we are also looking

into the car sector because, you know, on the one hand, you have the windshields that fog up and it always takes a while until they defog, but then you also have sensors like radar systems or also in medical devices, when you have a human breath that, you know, can deteriorate a signal. this sunlight—powered coating could change the way we see things, quite literally. so could this be the solution we've been waiting for? the future could look a whole lot clearer, powered by a little bit of sunshine and a dash of gold. lara: wearables have been trying to help us be our best selves for years. now, though, it might be time to dig deeper.

not my usual attire. now, there's plenty of technology out there to help us track our health but, with an increasing focus on ways to either prevent disease or at least identify it early, i've come to visit one company that's hoping to provide low—cost scans — so instead of the thousands of pounds that they can cost, a full body once—over forjust a few hundred quid. but how useful are they? neko health was co—founded by spotify founder daniel ek so, unsurprisingly, has tech at its core. all right. so first we'll be starting with the body scanner. this wasn't what i was expecting. it looks more like a dance floor. this wall of cameras is responsible for over 2,000 2d and 3d images, so it will be able to map all of the moles and lesions you may have on your body. and the ai system will flag anything of interest, alongside an actual doctor checking. the scan is also looking

for inflammation with its thermal imaging cameras. we're trying to bring in 215t century technology and use data to create a very personalised health experience. and who better to sort of guide us through that than daniel, who's done exactly that, but for music? robe back on — that was bright, and quick. then bloods are taken and zoomed off in a tube. eye pressure is checked along with blood pressure and grip strength, which they consider a marker of how you're expected to recover from serious disease. great. then there were a load of cardiovascular checks, an ecg, plus some fancy machines that we weren't allowed to film in action. we want to get as much high quality health information out in the shortest amount of time possible, in the cheapest way possible. so we use any technology we can find to deliver that.

so that's the laser radar machine. i'll be pinpointing these laser signals at different parts of your body to measure something called a pulse wave velocity, and it will help us have a better look at your cardiovascular health. and last but not least, we've got the tissue scanner. so this will help us have a better look at your metabolism and your microcirculation beneath your skin by using light waves in different frequencies and wavelengths. hi, lara. hello. come on back in. then you meet the doctor, in a pod, who presents you with a lot of data, advice, and your avatar. apart from my grip strength needing some work, i had a screen of optimal readings. then came a good nose inside my veins... ..and hearing this. heartbeat. sounds like thunder! it's a nice, strong, healthy heart sound. there are specialists and further tests available on site for anything that needs escalating.

i wondered how often that might happen. we went through all of the scans that we did in our first year in sweden and we published all of our outcomes, and what we found was that for about 1 in 100, so 1%, they had an immediately life—threatening condition that they were unaware of. for about 10%, they had something seriously going on that was undiagnosed, and we helped them get the appropriate care as well. and for about 80—85%, they were in good health. medics are increasingly embracing prevention, but some don't feel that availability of full body scans — not neko specifically, but any — are the best solution. you can't go what i call fishing, which isjust put somebody through a machine and hope for the best. you have to be looking forsomething, looking for a disease that's important. what happens is you pick up coincidental findings that are normal, but you end up having more tests and more tests. i think what we should be promoting isn't these scans, but is actually people getting

wearables to start understanding their body indices. the traditional medicine would say, "oh, if someone is healthy, it's unnecessary that we're checking things." and we kind of think the opposite, that helping these people stay healthy, that's actually the most important thing for the future. this fusion of ai, tech and human doctors appeared to do the bits that it did well. but on the flip side of overdiagnosis, how about what it can't see? digestive issues, women's health, maybe other cancers. warning signs might show up in blood tests or be raised in a consultation, but amidst what aims to be a comprehensive once—over, there are still limitations. spencer: 0k, time for a look at this week's tech news now. ai assistants with really good long—term memory are about a year away, according to microsoft's head of ai mustafa suleyman.

he said products which can recall conversations, projects and problems will encourage users to invest more time, and share more of their personal history with them. some critics have concerns about this level of integration — including privacy, and the possibility of the ai tools giving wrong information, or displaying in—built bias towards the user. scientists at the university of montreal have found new ways to help cats suffering from chronic pain. instead of having to sedate the felines, they've been able to scan their brains while they're awake using electrodes hidden under specially knitted hats. in the past, the cats tended to shake off or chew the wired electrodes used in testing — well, they're cats, that's what they do — but now, the cats in hats are cute and cosy. and its happy birthday to comic sans. yeah, love it or hate it, this font has been around for 30 years! it was originally designed as part of microsoft bob — a piece of software designed

to make windows more user—friendly. it was released in 1994 and, unbelievably, it's still around today. chris: a dead sumatran elephant, its tusks removed. poachers are suspected. to protect elephants, the transnational trade in modern ivory is banned by international convention. but tusks of the type seen in this footage from russia in 2016 aren't prohibited. that's because they've come from the elephant�*s extinct ice age relative, the mammoth. tonnes of ancient tusks are extracted from the frozen ground every year, but telling the difference between legal mammoth ivory and illegal elephant ivory is a real problem for border security, and is even a challenge for mammoth experts at the natural history museum in london.

hi, adrian, lovely to see you. very nice to meet you. in his office, professor lister had gathered together lots of examples of mammoth ivory. what is a mammoth? well, a mammoth was a species of elephant. they were actually quite closely related to the living elephants, but the mammoth was a species of elephant adapted to the cold conditions of the ice age, and they had a huge distribution. it's been estimated that there were probably as many as 10 million mammoths at their peak. how hard is it to tell the difference between mammoth ivory and elephant ivory? once a piece has been carved, like this little mammoth model, which is made of mammoth ivory... actually, i know that because i bought this at a mammoth ivory shop in alaska where they dig up the tusks. however, if i didn't know that, i couldn't tell. i've been working on mammoths, you know, for decades, and elephants. but you can't really tell whether that is mammoth or elephant ivory.

the only way you could tell would be to actually take a piece of this and submit it either for radiocarbon dating, because a mammoth would be tens of thousands of years old, or dna analysis. but first of all, that's destructive of the specimen, secondly, it's expensive and would take time — weeks — before you got the result. and if you're a border security guard, you know, trying to stop the trade in illegal elephant ivory, a tough job to try and tell the two apart. yes. i mean, you can't do it. you couldn't, really. there's not really any way of knowing. i mean, we've got a piece of elephant ivory here. how easy would it be to disguise this as mammoth ivory? very, very easy. you see this piece of elephant ivory that's been in the museum for years. here's an equivalent tusk tip from a mammoth, and all you would have to do would be to stain this a brown colour and you couldn't tell the difference. so this is a school of anatomy.

you'd never guess, would you? laughter. at bristol university, dr rebecca shepherd, with help from professor lister and others, has found a quick way to tell different types of ivory apart using lasers. there's a piece of equipment at airports around the world called a raman spectrometer, and this is already used in the identification of materials for things like drugs and unidentified liquids, so we're trying to repurpose this to tell the difference between elephant and mammoth ivory. essentially, it shines a laser at a sample, and the way that laser bounces back to the detector can tell you really detailed information about what a material is made of. there are people running legitimate businesses carving mammoth ivory, and presumably your technique will be useful for them because it gives them a way of proving, look, this is legal mammoth ivory. absolutely. it can be used tojust prove that a sample is what it says it is. is there a lot of interest from law enforcement in this new technique? there is. i've been talking to people

within border force in the uk and the uk wildlife crime agency, and there is potential use for this in law enforcement in the uk. you're also thinking about different types of things that you could identify using this tech. i had a really interesting conversation with somebody from homeland security recently who said that it's a bit of a problem people trying to smuggle eggs of endangered bird species across the border from mexico. so the next project i'd like to get started is to see if we can tell the difference between eggs of different species. since she published her results, dr shepherd's work has attracted international interest. so, i'm currently in hong kong, and i'm here to present my research at a workshop that's designed to get together people involved in preventing wildlife crime from across all of asia. so there's people from wwf, people from border force, people from homeland security, and everyone with an interest in wildlife crime.

well, the mammoths are extinct, helped on their way by human beings. some people fear elephants might go the same way. mammoths only went extinct 4,000 years ago and we think that the reason for that was a kind of double whammy of climate change that was happening at that time and hunting by people. and when we look at modern elephants, they are faced by the same combination of factors. so the mammoth, if you like, is a kind of a lesson from the past that if we don't do something about it, the living elephants may go the same way. i have seen gods fly. spencer: in the heart of africa lies the top—secret, high—tech nation of wakanda, the setting for marvel�*s two iconic black panther

movies and ruled over by angela bassett�*s queen ramonda. my son, it is your time. much of the movie was created using suitably advanced technology, and that includes the queen's wardrobe, the most elaborate parts of which — her crown and neckwear — were 3d printed. with the 3d printing technique, you can create more complex geometries, more innovative designs, and also in a more sustainable way. julia koerner is an austrian designer and architect who specialises in 3d printing high fashion pieces and products, couture dresses, bags, accessories and ornaments. but it was queen ramonda's fabulous attire that caught our eye and also those of the 0scarsjudges. both black panther films won their costume designer, ruth e carter, academy awards. the design process for black panther was looking

at the traditional zulu patterns, which traditional african women would wear and taking those african patterns and digitising them in the computer to represent the regal attire of the queen. there are many different 3d printing techniques, and the crown was created using something called laser sintering, where lasers melt together particular parts of a box of powder, leaving the rest as dust. the end product is then dug out and the remaining powder reused. one of the great things about it is that you can realise very filigreed, very fine structures which you cannot make with any other technology. how did you get involved with black panther, and did you even know who you were working for? at the beginning, i didn't know who i was working for. i started the design process, then the actress was cast. i literally put into google, "angela bassett, film star,

film technology," and then realised it was for marvel and black panther. so that's how you found out who you were working for? exactly. when i first time watched the film, i think one of the most overwhelming things was to actually see the work on the big screen, to see how many people in the world were able to see this. and i had friends come to me and say, "julia, ifinally know what you're actually doing!" over the years, julia has collaborated with several haute couture houses. her designs are unique, inspired by nature, with a focus on using sustainable materials in the 3d printing process. a prime example of this isjulia's setaejacket, which was shown in philadelphia's museum of art. i was inspired by the madagascan sunset butterfly moth, because it has thousands of different colours in its wing, and it was the firstjacket made in this

technique that a printer, like in an ink—jet printing process, puts the material layer by layer onto the jacket. because it's printed in little dots and points, there's a certain flexibility which stays within the fabric. 3d printing is a technology which seems to be finding its place at either end but not the middle of the market — amongst those who need expensive bespoke items, and the hobbyists. cue toybox. we make it accessible. if you remember, like, eight years ago, everyone was telling you that 3d printing was going to take over the world... yeah. ..and it didn't. and the reason it didn't is cos it's really difficult to do. and that's why the founders of this company created toybox. what differentiates this printer is all of the technical stuff, the mumbojumbo behind the scenes, all of that is done for you and you just press print.

toybox is a small, personal 3d printer that's trying to — ahem — break the mould. it's connected to an app with 15,000 designs to choose from, many of which are free. the printing process can take anything from six minutes to several hours, depending on the complexity of the design and the resolution — the number of lines per centimetre — that you're happy to print at. this little chap took nine minutes. it's a little cat. and it's amazing how intricate you can get. one of the things that's always intrigued me about 3d printing is the idea that you can create objects that it would be impossible to manufacture in any other way, cos they're so complex and weird and they've got bits inside and outside other bits. now you can also make things which are flexible, but you can print them all in one go. so this comes out of the printer as a oner and then you just give the joints a little wiggle and it snaps the little supporting

struts between each one, and you get something bendy like this hammerhead shark. multicoloured toys are printed in their constituent coloured components and then snapped together afterwards. but hang on — how do you preventjust anyone from churning out loads of these copyrighted toys without permission? so, let's say you were to go to print spongebob�*s head. you would press spongebob�*s head, it would send a message up to the cloud, the cloud would encrypt that file and send it directly to your printer to only print once. so it never hits your phone, your computer, or your tablet — it only goes to your printer and it's only encrypted to work on your printer once. but here's a question that's always bothered me — aren't 3d printed objects always going to be more expensive to make than those identical, mass produced, injection—moulded items that we're all used to? well, julia koerner has

a thought on that, too. i think in today's time, where we focus on personalisation and mass customisation, the 3d printing technology brings advantages in these aspects where you can have your unique design personalised in your unique colour, maybe with your initials designed into it. also, i think in today's time, do we really need to produce a million pieces where we end up not knowing if we actually will sell those? it is an interesting thought, isn't it? but if 3d printing is to be a sustainable alternative to mass production, if we really want to reap the benefits of this technology, well, we do have to be able to afford it. anyway, that's it from us for this week. thank you very much for watching and we will see you soon.

hello. if you have travel plans this weekend, it's probably worth keeping an eye on the weather forecast because wintry weather could cause some quite significant disruption. met office amber warnings have been issued for snow and ice during the weekend, particularly covering parts of wales, the midlands and up into northern england as we head through saturday night and on into sunday. so what's going on? well, cold air has set in across the uk, this cold arctic air sitting in place. and then from the south—west, some milder air tries to make a move. and along the boundary between the two, we have this weather front. as this weather front moves into the cold air, well, it is that that will generate some significant snow for some of us, but also some rain down towards the south

as things turn milder. saturday morning, though, starting with some fog, especially down towards the south — freezing fog after a cold night. and after that foggy start, with cloud rolling in from the south, i think across some southern parts, it will be quite a grey day. it will be quite a grey day. more sunshine for northern england, northern ireland more sunshine for northern england, northern ireland and scotland, although there and scotland, although there will be some wintry showers. will be some wintry showers. in fact, some more widespread in fact, some more widespread wet and wintry weather moving wet and wintry weather moving across the northern isles. across the northern isles. temperatures really struggling. temperatures really struggling. in aberdeen, it may in aberdeen, it may not get above freezing not get above freezing through the afternoon. through the afternoon. even further south, even further south, highs of 3, 4, 5 degrees. highs of 3, 4, 5 degrees. but as we head through saturday but as we head through saturday evening, that wet weather moves evening, that wet weather moves into the south—west of england, into the south—west of england, maybe some snow over higher maybe some snow over higher ground, but that snow ground, but that snow developing more widely developing more widely as our weather system moves as our weather system moves into wales, the midlands. across high ground in northern into wales, the midlands. 0ver some of the highest ground 0ver some of the highest ground here, we could see 30cm here, we could see 30cm of snow, maybe up to 40cm of snow, maybe up to 40cm eventually across the high eventually across the high ground of the pennines — ground of the pennines — that snowfall moving its way that snowfall moving its way into northern england. into northern england. but notice what happens but notice what happens down to the south by down to the south by the end of the night. the end of the night. 12 degrees there in plymouth 12 degrees there in plymouth for sunday morning, some much for sunday morning, some much milder air to the south. milder air to the south. and so some of what falls and so some of what falls from the sky will be turning from the sky will be turning back to rain across parts back to rain across parts of wales, the midlands. of wales, the midlands.

that could give ice for a time. that could give ice for a time. further snow, particularly further snow, particularly across high ground in northern

dozens more. live from washington. live from washington. this is bbc news. this is bbc news. for house speaker, mikejohnson, narrowly holds donald trump's pick for house speaker, for house speaker, mikejohnson, narrowly holds mikejohnson, narrowly holds on to the position after two last—minute vote changes by republican holdouts. a new yorkjudge upholds trump's conviction in his hush money trials but signals he won't impose prison time on the president—elect. and president biden will visit new orleans on monday, following an attack on new year's day that killed 1a people and injured