Between to sixteen Olympic Games because to so many of south africa to gold in the womens eight hundred meter event but some said so many are shouldnt be allowed to compete her natural testosterone levels are unusually holy so is she actually a man. You know because hormones are the only thing that determines a persons sex. The external and internal sex organs also play a role as do the chromosomes normally x. X. In women and x. Y. In men. And sometimes its a mix of all of these so determining sex is far from simple if only we could look inside the break. Does the brain have a gender can we tell just by looking at it we ask a neuro anatomist. To see him get a scare this is the brain of someone who donated his or her body to medical science some of them an angel tissue has been removed from what im able to see i couldnt tell you whether its a mans brain or a womans brain that firstly. Signs isnt a reliable indicator because that also tends to depend on your body size rather than your gender but what about inside the brain or are there differences in how its wired. And seek reason in this area with spleen e m is a lot more prominent and figure in the female brain to go with men in this area is not as barbers do not just or so it was to be here. But i can also show you the brain of a woman where this distinction is not as clear. Its who you can see smooth the transition. So this structure doesnt allow us to reliably identify a mans brain or a womans brain so when i get home again. Hundreds of studies have examined the anatomy of the brain in order to determine the differences between the sexes and International Research team has compared our best data one conclusion it came to that there are more similarities than differences. But its not just about the visible distinctions are there differences between the brains of men and women in terms of function. Women are generally said to be more linguistically talented than men and men are considered to have better spatial awareness. The latter can be determined using the mental rotation test which of the images correspond to the first one. Men tend to perform better in their stats the surprising thing is that womens performance is very according to their monthly cycle so why is that. M. R. I. Scans show how hormones. Change our brains. Harmonious exercise a continual influence time before birth they have a strong impact on how our brain develops but they also affect us our whole life long and thats particularly apparent with women during the course of their menstrual cycle. Estrogen increases over the course of the menstrual cycle and progesterone also starts to kick in a bit later. The studies of the effect of estrogen have revealed that when the levels are low womens behavior tends to resemble mens behavior more closely. Than men in the house and that means when a woman is having her period her brain is more under the influence of testosterone than on the other days of her cycle so it isnt as straightforward as one might think. In recent Years Research has focused increasingly on transgender people their gender identity or gender expression differs from the gender that they were assigned at birth. Or their biological markers in the brain that indicate trans identity in a bid to find that out scientists measured how the brain reacts to voices. As moms eat with those here we see activity in the auditory cortex this is the area responsible for hearing and also how we process voices you can see that this trans womans brain lies between the different activation patterns displayed by men and women. And shows they cant simply be assigned to one sex or the other. Although the research is still in its infancy and this field leader shows differences between men and women but also to nonbinary areas. With the brain and we expected to discover that there were no fixed categories you know instead its a continuum our brain develops into what can be classed as more male or more female. On the basis of biological hormonal and chromosomal influence. Its not static that develops in interaction with our environment and our experience with. The brain cant be clearly identified as having one single sex its a mix of many female and the many shades in between. One shot shock of electricity and frankensteins monster is jolted into life. In the classic film based on the novel written by mary shelley thats all it takes. But what happens in real life when electricity is applied to regions of the brain. Research is that the University Hospital of zurich want to give our brains acoustic so question wolf and his team have wired up their test subjects. And the experiment begins now but. Over all the subjects dont actually feel a thing transcranial brain stimulation involves a point electric current to a specific region of the organ in this case one of these known to influence mathematical reasoning. For ten minutes the subjects at about solving tricky subtraction and multiplication exercises with startling results the house before us when weve discovered that when this region is stimulated the test subjects get more subtraction problems right. In other words it makes subtraction easier for them interestingly we found no effect on multiplication so it appears that this region is responsible for subtraction. Transcranial brain stimulation in general is said to hold great potential. As a student in some studies test subjects were given working memory exercises they had to remember sequences of numbers and if you do that over the course of a week using stimulation four months later you discover that the ones who received the stimulation still have a better capacity than those who didnt see the need to be. And researchers elsewhere are also turning out exciting results of a team in the us likewise experimenting with electrical brain stimulation the us army is using the research to a drone pilots who have to stare at screens for hours on end looking for proverbial needles in haystacks the slightest lapse in concentration could mean disaster. Transcranial brain stimulation can significantly increase concentration on attention span. So were looking at our future. Too but inevitably there will be debate over the extent to which we should employ Something Like neuro enhancement to improve the natural functions of the brain events or doesnt and im among those who see it with a critical eye because you have to ask yourself just how much youre willing to interfere and such an organized we only do it with other organs when theyre not functioning like putting a pacemaker in a diseased heart and youve always got to ask what side effects are going to have and to what extent boosting one particular brain ability mike we can another way. But lots of questions are open so this form of brain doping is still a distant process. And now we tend to see animals. As. Different species have developed different forms of communication. Vocalizations can serve to scare off. That im jack im eleven european short hair and thats my cool he lives here too. I have five brothers and sisters but theyre a bit standoffish. Thats my other human. Is the tin. Im going to teach us some feline language today like how to meow im hungry or let me out. Cats and he says meow and weve got to make doesnt like its thing we open a fresh package he wants out and we open the door. Of course they manipulate us cat owners are probably the most easily manipulated creatures on earth. Manipulate. Maybe just need a few lines human dictionary to understand us a bit better after all we only know for humans. Thats why im going to see marina today shes a researcher who could interpret that. Brought a couple of samples on video. Because she recognizes a lot in our voices things like volume and pitch this isnt one thats arrived it was recorded during feeding then we do a lot of math calculation number of things what are the basic frequencies and here we can see the areas in purple that is the area of maximum energy what we call frequency. Those are the parameters we used to describe the vocalizations. That should be easy enough when i sit in front of my. Eyes cuts and visits and i can actually pass and it would probably say thats a feed me. And forget you have to remember theres a context to the me out when you cant sit in front of its bow miaowing then youll probably go to your cache and see the bowl. And then i look cool youll interpret that behavior and no right it wants to be fed the taste but that doesnt necessarily mean its a typical fede mean yeah. Thats true you often get it wrong sometimes we just want attention thats my body. And alexis. Covert manipulate. Just watch how he keeps them in line. You know every time we go out he makes exactly the same noises when he also pathetically i cant help because back upstairs. Its the high pitched. And when hes hungry then its just a meal now. Youve got to hand it to him as a hard core meows. I was able to extract some relatively clear vocalisations yes if you want to focalize ations and heres where he wants to be left out this is sort of general emotional rule you could say went after the more negative the emotion the greater the education the longer the vocalisation. And the pitch usually rises as well. As we do that too when we worked up our voice got tired and sometimes its really hard to control that. We found the same parameters with cats when cats get more worked out of their voice cracks a bit we humans perceive higher pitched vocalizations as more urgent. Friends home and. That holds for your human babies too when they get that high pitched cry you go running. When i create my own special way she doesnt always get the message. Well i come home and he runs to greet me i pick a matter of get a little kiss when i put him down he gets annoyed. That could mean not now or could mean pick me up i mean lets get back to this later it depends. She needs an interpreter. But he gets it. You can tell from like. Shes enjoying it to. The hering has a completely different acoustic structure its nothing like meowing for example you may hear it when you stroking your cats or when your cat rubs against your leg. But it can be employed in other contexts like begging for food or hired full time every cat is different they all have their own personalities and you think not as magical as i would like humans in that respect they have different behavioral profiles and different voices. I was about to give gabby a feline dictionary but it seems you need a new one for every single cat. Even if every cas is an individual they all have one thing in Common People just cant seem to get enough of them either at home or online on facebook we asked you to share your experiences with your pets and not surprisingly got lots of responses. Chris and they told us about his furry friend ronnie who seems to be in charge. According to. Their cats are totally convinced that theyre the monsters and humans are little more than slaves. Lots of you out there send him videos and photographs of your pets heroes some of the ones that really caught our eye. It seems to have got the knack of it. The first time i did a little bit on the tight side. Maybe at the end. Im david very. Ok now its fair to address again. Time to leave behind out full cattle a cap filled homestead out into the great beyond this weeks viewer question comes from sandy. Why is it dark in outer space. There are more than one hundred billion stars in our milky way and its just one of the countless galaxies and the universe sensitive instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed that there are ten times more galaxies out there than we thought just a few decades ago and these gigantic swarms of stars are distributed quite uniformly throughout space so we should see light shining at us from every direction right. Just like we see trees in every direction were standing in the midst of a huge forest but the night sky is mostly dark this apparent contradiction was first described by astronomer hyman all of us around two hundred years ago thats why its called paradox. Today we believe the universe formed fourteen billion years ago in whats called the big bang since then says the theory the universe has been expanding at an ever increasing rate. Here on earth we can see just one small sliver of the universe many stars are so far away that their light hasnt arrived here yet after all it takes two and a half million years for light to make the journey from our nearest galactic neighbor and drama to the earth. And because the universe is expanding radiation from distant galaxies is also stretched into wavelengths that are no longer visible to the human eye but they are visible to the Hubble Telescope it can also observe radiation and those parts of the spectrum and even reveal stars hidden behind clouds of cosmic dust that block radiation in the visible spectrum the light. And thats why at least to our eyes the night sky is dark. The problem is red why are there but only very few it. Do you have a science question that youve always wanted answered it were happy to help out send it to us as a video text over a smell if we answer it on the show well send you a little surprise as a thank you catalog and just ask. Youll find us online under d. W. Dot com slash science and of course on twitter and facebook so get in touch. Since the very first automobile hit the road in eight hundred eighty five cars have changed or not. Countless millions of them have rolled off the tree feel the most important things speed and looks environmental friendliness didnt play a big role until now ecards could help us achieve the dream of a cleaner greener future but the batteries and then rely on lithium in germany plans to mine the metal are ramping up. The alps can pick up mountains are situated on the border between germany and the Czech Republic here near the town his invite is a treasure worth an estimated one hundred fourteen billion euro europes largest lithium deposit a group of researchers from the fi tag university of mining are descending eighty meters beneath the surface to examine the reserves the valuable Natural Resource is hidden in this glittering rock called lithium mica. In the youre saying look right here in this area is nearly one hundred percent so its a very lithium rich though no. For nearly five hundred years this was an active mind that yielded mainly ten people knew there was let in here but they had no real use for it to fly back researchers have assessed the size of the deposit. For an positing a compass or some ninety thousand tons of lithium out of but thats just a third of the overall deposit theres twice that over on the chalk side so if we add it all up incorporating some of the older calculations we arrive at an estimate of at least two hundred fifty thousand tonnes of metallic lithium compared to other deposits around the world for example those in australia this is certainly an important deposit and of course a lot of that. For years the lithium in this mine remained virtually untouched there was no way to extract it on a commercial scale now thats changed the freiburg researchers have developed a new process to extract Lithium Carbonate friends involved i. Used to make batteries for cell phone cameras and laptops. Its also a key material in the production of storage shelves for solar and wind energy. And as electra mobility takes off demand will continue to soar so this raw material that play such a Critical Role in the transition to cleaner energy. Its going. To visit. The price of lithium has nearly doubled over the last year and a half and its been turned over Lithium Carbonate in the form in which i was traded now costs around thirteen thousand dollars. On the chinese stock market itself around twenty two or twenty three thousand dollars a tonne along. The process used to extract the lithium from or is relatively simple there or is first crushed and is involved it is removed using magnets. Its then heated to one thousand degrees celsius which causes the chemical bonds in the material to break down making the various elements in the symbol take easier to separate. The fluoride aluminum and iron which used to get in the way of lithium extraction can also be refined and used. By good friends are good if you can already say that the process is very environmentally friendly you can even call it a form of green mining because it doesnt produce any waste. The crucial step is just Carbon Dioxide and water as a leeching medium. With the help of electro dialysis pressure and heat the Carbon Dioxide escapes leaving the Lithium Carbonate behind once thats filtered and dried it can be sold commercially. Because extreme im fucked up its very simple thats important otherwise it might not be economically viable the amount of lithium in sin well diet isnt very high the extraction process has to be easy and inexpensive otherwise it wouldnt be worth it i talk to the greats. Whats more the same process can be used to extract lithium from old battery. Until now both e. M. I. And battery is collected for recycling has been fed into a High Temperature furnace that yields an alley from which cobalt nickel and copper can be recovered. To recycle the lithium it would need to be extracted from the slack before its melted. The lithium is contained in whats called the black mass the substance layered on the cathode by adding Carbon Dioxide and water and heating the mass to at least fifty degrees celsius the other components of the black mass are melted out leaving behind a white deposit but the m carbonate. The opposite also we are able to extract nearly all the lithium from first generation batteries. Its a bit more difficult with the more modern batteries but weve been able to extract seventy five or eighty percent of it already with no real problems. But im all for life. In the future recycling all the valuable Raw Materials and lithium ion batteries will become ever more important to freiburg process thats very promising. The lithium that lies slumbering in the alps could become mountains has now become a valuable resource. And the old mine here may soon be brought back to life. That wraps it up for this week but join us again next time when well look at how researchers are trying to harness all to fish intelligence to decode hieroglyphs faster than ever before. Graphics in the video game sessions create origins are based on ancient egyptian sources. But Machine Learning played a key role during design. In the project experts from the field of egyptology worked closely with Game Developers the past meets the future next time on tomorrow today see that. Move. Move move. Move move move. Move. Move. Move. Move. Mov