North korea says it has not recorded a single case of the virus. This week, click looks at the latest temperature tracking gadgets and explores whether they can help in the fight against coronavirus. This week can taking your temperature stop the spread of coronavirus . Or will genetics be the answer . Or maybe youre just trying to drown out the noise. Shall i, shant i, shall i, shant i . Maybe not just now. Gotta happen soon, though, hasnt it . Welcome, hope youre well. Lara is online too. How are you, mate . Im good, thanks i tried to edit out my roots before posting a picture on social media yesterday. Laughter. Didnt work had to give up your hair is going to get crazy soon, isnt it . Listen, ive got something to cover up that hair if youre interested. Take a look at this. 0h goodness, that looks a bit dramatic yeah, it is a thermal imaging helmet. Now the idea is it can quickly screen people to check for fever. Its already being used in china, but the company now says they are talking to governments and Police Forces across the uk, europe, and the middle east. It looks quite menacing but impressive if it does the job. Yeah, and around the world, companies and governments are looking at testing peoples temperatures to try and spot those who might have covid i9. Vodafone is another company that is rolling out thermal imaging with a camera which can scan up to eight people at a time. They say it is accurate to within 0. 3 celsius. But the question is though how useful is reading peoples temperatures in stopping the spread of the coronavirus . People have variable core body temperatures. So the range is between 36. 5 375 celsius. But there is some variability here, so that data itself might not be that useful. Second, there is an increasing amount of evidence showing that a larger number of people are asymptomatic. So even if you do not develop a fever, then you can still go on to infect others. For the most part these days especially i would imagine most people who are feeling ill would put their hand up first and say im not feeling well, or there is something wrong, and they wouldnt try to fool the device for example by taking ibuprofen or paracetamol which would bring the temperature down anyway if it was only slightly elevated. So the practical utility of this idea seems to me rather limited. But vodafone feels it is still worthwhile. It is very possible to have false positives and to miss people coming through. However, we think we will catch or identify enough people that it is still a valuable tool to add to our toolkit for creating a safe working environment while we wait for a vaccine for covid 19. So instead ofjust taking a one off temperature measurement, you could look at taking continuous ones and even add data from other vital signs too. In fact, thats just what this trial is doing. Liechtenstein, a principality with a population of only 38,000, is piloting a programme to fit its citizens with biometric bracelets in a drive to track potential cases of covid i9 in real time. We tried to find, like, kind of a signature of this disease by measuring parameters of the human body that could give us an early indication if there is a second wave coming. The bracelet measures the heartbeat, the skin temperature, and some other parameters that can be easily measured on the wrist. But these bracelets are not a new product, and actually have a surprising origin. Its really a solution for couples who are trying to get pregnant. So through the device, you are measuring different physiological parameters, and based on those physiological parameters, we can detect the fertile window. Then when covid started to arrive, we realised that the combination of the parameters that you are measuring could be basically uniquely suited to look at covid and basically monitoring the infection. And we have a couple of other countries and larger projects that are also interested, so we might make this study part of a larger study in the end, and it would roll out europe wide. However, the roll out of biometric bracelets across europe may not be straightforward. Health data is particularly sensitive data. So it has a higher level of protection. You can only process it on a member state basis if you have a strong legal basis provided by law to do that. So it might even be possible that some eu laws would need to adopt a new law allowing for the processing of the data. And in belgium, there is a very different type of wristband being introduced at the port of antwerp. When corona started, we had this idea where we said, hey, wait a minute. We already do measuring between typically a device and between a machine. Couldnt we just measure distance between two devices . Now we can also provide social distancing capabilities using the same technology, where the wearer gets a vibration when he or she comes too close they need to step back to get out of the dangerous zone. The bracelet could also be activated for Contact Tracing but privacy is an objection. Prior to covid 19, everybody thought, my privacy is the starting point of everything in every debate. Well, thats not really the case any more if you have to make sure that everybody stays healthy, right . However, the introduction of this technology has worried trade unions. You have to understand how unions work and think. And if they do not fully understand what this is as a piece of technology and what it provides, and where the benefits are fortheir members, they object by definition, right . And i think that is a mistake some of the companies make, saying, oh, this is cool technology, were going to implement this, without taking the time to explain what this is for and what the benefits are. Across the world, companies are recognising that their products can be repurposed in the battle against covid i9. However, as governments increasingly look to technology as a solution, ethical and legal boundaries are starting to be tested. Hello and welcome to the week in tech. It was the week that robots were being developed to test temperatures in waiting rooms in sweden. A new quadruped robot dog was unveiled by a Chinese Company unitree, and full body disinfection pods were trialled at hong kong airport. This booth has an antimicrobial coating and sprays passengers for a0 seconds with a sanitising mist. It was also the week that an engineer and Senior Vice President at amazon made a Million Dollar decision to quit hisjob over allegations of unsafe factory conditions. Tim bray said workers had been fired for circulating a petition complaining about poor conditions. Amazon says the employees were dismissed for violating internal practices. Drone air corridors will be created for remote regions of the uk, according to the Civil Aviation authority, allowing for contactless deliveries of essential items. The relaxed flying rules will see designated zones where Drone Operators can fly out of the line of sight if they meet safety standards. Nasa announced its teaming up with tom cruise to make a film about the International Space station, but wouldnt comment on speculation the actor may be headed into orbit. Nasa says more details on the film will be revealed at the appropriate time. And finally, robots seem to be lending a helping hand all over the place these days, and Grocery Shopping is no exception. This robot called secondhands is funded by the eu. It has been designed by a consortium of universities and Online Grocery retailer 0cado. His purpose is providing a second pair of hands for workers and taking over more menial tasks. At times during this lockdown, it has felt like life might never be the same again. The stress of financial uncertainty coupled with the intensity of being cooped up at home could be a dangerous combination for our Mental Health. Patient. Info has a wealth of articles on clinical advice curated by medical authors. Younger viewers and their parents and carers can turn to young minds which includes support for people with other conditions such as 0cd and autism that they are now coping with the lockdown. Covid calm was set up to help healthcare workers with free mindfulness and stress management tools. Ppe for the mind, if you will. If your Mental Health and dont need that kind of support, congratulations a little mindful meditation may help you stay that way. Daily meditation exercises from the smiling mind app help me tune out counter productive worrying and focus on things i can control. And spotify is curating a Daily Wellness playlist full of podcasts, meditation guides and more. Of course in the age of ai, there are plenty of bots to chat it out with if you cant find a human. Wysa chats through your problems, suggesting thera py based exercises to help. Ive found it cant talk specifically about coronavirus yet, but you can bring in a qualified human therapist if you upgrade to premium. Booster buddy helps you start the day with free mindfulness tasks and can be set up to manage your to do list and medication reminders as well. And my possible self has a mood tracker and suggests health and well being exercises appropriate to your state of mind. And one click viewer is curating a covid i9 newsfeed for his family filled with only positive stories. Sometimes just taking a break from your own worried head is enough to keep you going. And homenauts is the Perfect Place to look for inspiration. As well as tips from the professionally isolated on surviving a lockdown, there is a crowdsourced list of activities you can try to take your mind off things. There is no order to this rapidly growing compendium, but scrolling through it feels like a kind of therapy in itself. And im going to leave you with a page that now resides permanently on my second monitor, for those moments when i need less covid i9 and more puppy. That was kate. If you have concerns or could just do with some reassurance or coping tactics at the moment, you can visit the nhs website where they have a coronavirus portal with links to approved helplines. Ok, lets talk about the latest research into the virus. And for that, we have to go to iceland. Back in 2013 we went to iceland to a Company Called decode genetics, who were doing Genetic Research on what is a pretty unusual country. See, iceland has a record of its peoples ancestry going back 1000 years. And therefore it has some idea of who shares genes with who. Icelanders have also been donating blood to the company for years, which is then deep frozen in this blood bank, so it can be used for future research into what genes may make people resistant or susceptible to certain diseases. And now that is paying off in spades. I spoke to the director of decode earlier, and he told me that having sequenced the genes of half the population, he has had a massive head start in trying to work out why the coronavirus affects some people worse than others. This team has been working together for almost a quarter of a century and it feels like Everything Else we have done, it feels like merely a preparation for this. We have an enormous amount of data on the people who got infected. We are in a privileged position to look at the genetics of the patients and see how the genetics influences the probability of getting infected and getting seriously ill when you become infected. Decode has now tested nearly 14 of the population for the coronavirus, the highest in any country. That has really informed our understanding of covid i9. For example he says that contrary to some reports, it seems that nearly everyone who has the disease does eventually display symptoms. And the race is now on to understand why those symptoms range so widely from the very mild to the very severe. Is it because they have previously caught a different coronavirus and developed some immunity . Or is it to do with different strains of the virus itself . Viruses naturally mutate as they travel from one person to another, and as this one has spread, it has morphed into many different strains that can be identified from its genetic data, and which are being shared by scientists across the world. What is not known at the moment is whether some strains are more harmful than others. When viruses mutate, they usually mutate to become more infectious and less harmful. Because the evolutionary goal of the virus is to go as widely as possible, to become as many as possible. And if the virus causes a serious disease, then it limits the transmission because the person who becomes seriously ill is not going to move around and spread the virus. But this virus has found a way around this because most people are mildly infected they can roam around and spread the virus all over the place, but then there are the few unfortunate, so this virus has the best of both worlds it can spread widely and it can kill. Whats also fascinating is that because the virus has mutated as it is travelled across the world, its possible for geneticists to examine a patient and tell them the route that their infection took as it travelled from china. In the us, for example, the virus first arrived on the west coast directly from china. But meanwhile, another strain was making its way across europe and it arrived in new york in the middle of march and that was the strain that eventually came to dominate the country, probably because new york is the gateway most americans use to come back home. And while italy seemed to be the epicentre of the european outbreak, Something Else was going unnoticed. When the authorities were focusing on people coming from ski vacations in the alps, the virus was clearly sneaking into the country from other countries such as Great Britain and its absolutely clear that very early in the epidemic, the virus was widely spread in Greater Society because a very significant proportion of the cases in iceland came to iceland from those who were travelling from Great Britain. Despite everything, iceland is now starting to recover from the epidemic. Its come through with very few deaths and without the complete lockdown that many countries have enforced. This, says dr stefa nsson, is because with widespread testing, the country could quickly find those who are infected, trace who theyd been in contact with and then just isolate those people, stopping the epidemic before it got out of control. Some of course would say that iceland has had it relatively easy with its small population and remote location. Would these kind of measures, including this massively manually intensive Contact Tracing, work in bigger countries like the uk . Listen to me, there is no alibi in your size. You could use exactly the same methods we have used and i think you could be as effective as we, just as long as there is a number of resources to do it. Yes, in Great Britain, you have a lot more people who are infected because your population size is incredibly much larger than ours but you have also more people to do the work. I think what is amazing when you look at this epidemic, the two most resourceful countries in the world really, the United Kingdom and the united states, that they were completely unprepared for this. This has been a demonstration of how preparation and early action has saved lives. But its also a demonstration of how far technology has come to be able to crunch the enormous amount of data that is now spotting needles in genetic haystacks. I think that what this epidemic is showing is how incredibly powerful it is to be able to bring together large amounts of information, bring it together and mine it effectively. We would not have been able to do this 20 years ago. Really interesting stuff. I know, lets hope they and other scientists keep making those breakthroughs. Lets hope so. Now a lot of us are, of course, working from home at the moment, and as well as trying to perfect your background for video calls, a lot of us are having to put up with things like this. Dog barks or this. Alarm rings yeah, im often trying to compete with the washing machines fast spin cycle, i have to say well, chris fox has been trying to find ways to be heard above the background noise. Today, im on a mission to make as much noise as possible to see whether Machine Learning can clean up ouraudio. You might have seen online, a lot of gamers are really excited that nvidia, the graphics card maker, is testing some noise cancelling technology. Its called rtx voice, and to try it out, i have a professional microphone here and a high end Gaming Laptop with an nvidia rtx graphics card. And on this side, i have an ordinary laptop running some software called crisp, which says it can do the same thing without the expensive graphics card. The first test is a noisy city apartment. Ive left the doors open so we can hear the trains going past. The washing machine is on and, for good measure, this speaker is blasting out the sound of a dog barking. Woof ok, i can heara train going past now. So lets turn on the Noise Cancellation. And what nvidia says its doing here is using al on the graphics card on a bit of Spare Capacity you may not be using while gaming to do the Noise Cancellation. Train horn ok, we have a train going past. So, same experiment again lets turn on the Noise Cancellation theres the dog. And how does the laptop fare without the graphics card . This is just a software ai running on an ordinary laptop. Next, we will test in a coffee shop. And since i cant go to a real one, im playing crowd noise from this speaker, we are using the coffee machine and playing some music from the speaker all while i read the blurb on claire from steps autobiography. Claire richards has been an extraordinary roller coaster journey since shejoined steps at 19. After the highs of chart topping success and the fame that brought, her life hit rock bottom when she left the band. But she fought her way back to create a whole new career in television, finding her inner strength along the way. Now shes finally ready to bare it all. Round three is total chaos. Im using a hair dryer and a vacuum cleaner, and theres an alarm going off all while i read the introduction to the bbcs royal charter. Royal charter for the continuance of the british broadcasting corporation. Elizabeth ii, by the grace of god of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Royal charter the continuance of the british broadcasting corporation. Elizabeth ii, by the grace of god of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Well, lets talk to davit baghdasaryan from crisp. My first question is, are you using your noise cancelling tech . Because we will be listening for every bit of background noise. Yeah, absolutely, it is always turned on on my laptop. But let me clap and demonstrate. You wont hear anything. Now we have thrown a lot at the software today, and it did a really good job although with some of the louder noises, it did make the voice sound a bit processed. Is that something youre working on . We have a number of technologies we are working on right now. And at some point, its going to start adapting to your voice. And itll be, like, way more amazing than this demo, actually. Now both crisp and rtx voice work really well on a laptop with pretty much any video calling app you could want. But you are much more limited on android and ios smartphones. So are you hoping to partner with individual apps . We are doing those very strategically. We are very careful who we are partnering with. We did partner with discord, for example, and now crisp is powering 200 million users when they do, like, voice communication. So we think that was a Great Partnership and we are very proud of that. Ive really thrown a lot at both of these systems today, using deliberate background noise. But both of them have done a pretty good job of cleaning it up, even under extreme circumstances. Now nvidia is keen to point out that its system is just a test at the moment. But for gamers who already have those high end rtx graphics cards, it is a nice extra feature to have and should stop annoying background noise getting into your voice chat when gaming online. And for everybody else, Software Like crisp can help clean up our voice calls and video calls if you cant convince your housemates to be quiet. Chris fox, coming through loud and clear and thats it for this week. Thanks for being there again, lara. Thank you for being there again. My pleasure. Throughout the week, you can keep track of the team, albeit from hom, on youtube, instagram, facebook and twitter at bbcclick. Tell you what, if im brave enough, i might even put the trim online. Dont hold me to it, though. I tell you what, why not send out send us your photos of your lockdown haircut disasters . Make me feel better. Thanks for watching, and well see you soon. Bye bye. Hello there. Our weekend is definitely a tale of two halves, with the best of the sunshine and the warmth reserved for today. Take a look at shropshire earlier on not a cloud in the sky. Just as beautiful but a little more threatening across the highlands, with some dark leaden skies. There was quite a lot of cloud in scotland and its producing some rain today as well. This is the satellite picture where the thick cloud is sitting to the north. Not much in the way of cloud across much of england and wales, thats where the best of the sunshine and the warmth is going to be today. Some of that rain to the north west of the great glen will be quite heavy as well through the day and the winds are strengthening as well. Some sharp showers breaking out in one or two spots but dodge the showers, keep the sunshine, and temperatures peaking between 22 and 2a celsius. Thats the mid 70s in terms of fahrenheit. But the colder air sitting into the far north will sink its way steadily south through the night tonight, perhaps not arriving to the extreme south until later on into sunday but it will feel different. That rain pushes its way out of scotland into the north of england and Northern Ireland by dawn on sunday morning, weakening a little. Behind it, some wintry showers. So we could have a dusting of snow anywhere above 100 metres. With temperatures into the low single figures. You will probably wonder what all the fuss is about across england and wales first thing in the morning. A relatively mild start with some sunshine. But as that weak weather front sinks south, a band of cloud and a little bit of patchy rain and colder air arrives as well. Its notjust the source of the wind, its its strength, too. A cold northerly flow gusting in excess of 30 110 mph really will take the edge off of the feel of the weather. For many, temperatures down a good 10 13 celsius in comparison to today, along exposed maximum ofjust between six and eight celsius, even in london we are looking at 13. Gardeners and growers, take note. Sunday night into monday morning, with clear skies we could wake up to a frost. And that is going to be a bit of an issue for those tender spring plants. Things stay relatively quiet but on the cool side as we go into the next week. Winds are likely to ease through the middle part of the week. Not that much significant rain, mostly dry, but frosty nights with the winds slowly easing. Take care. Good afternoon. Airlines in the uk say they have been told the government will bring in a 14 day quarantine for anyone arriving from any country apart from the republic of ireland in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The new restriction is expected to take effect at the end of this month. The proposal has been described by Regional Airports as a devastating blow, as our Business Correspondent katy austin reports. People and businesses in england are waiting anxiously