ah, and eternity time, it can be measured precisely. and did every loop experience is it differently as if there are different forms of time? time with a dimension, if we know we won't live forever and illusion about time presenting futures past starts december 31st on d. w. if it's with are they smarter than we think? we look at the hidden wonders in the minds of pigeons and does music make us smarter, reset his have found some truly resonating inside. also in this week's

d, w sign show we face up to the phenomenon of super recognizes. welcome to to morrow to day. a lot of people have difficulty remembering faces or telling them apart. the key is their cognitive abilities. cutting edge technology can help us to correctly identify faces. as we all know, computer assisted facial recognition is now used to keep track of people in cities around the world. but some of us have similar faculties, and police forces are eager to recruit the services of these super recognizes london. 6 august 20, 201414 year old alice ross went for

a walk that afternoon. 6 at 4 26 pm, her image was recorded on cctv and then she disappeared. the police search for alice gross was the biggest in london since the 2005 bombing the video footage provided vital clues in the cctv capital of the world. an estimated 1000000 cameras track people as they go about their daily business. footage from these cameras is viewed in the headquarters of the london metropolitan police, also known as scotland yard. this is where the so called super recognizers work. people with particularly good recall when it comes to faces. they identify faces time and again, even partly concealed in crowds or in very grainy footage. it's

a skill that long when unrecognised and unused. to 94, i realized that the police weren't using see she tv properly than that of images just were being news like fingerprints and dna in a systematic way. so started to develop systems to gather images, to catalog them properly. and as i circulated them more and more, you realize that for every 100 identifications, some offices would, might want to. but some mood might 10 or 20. so it really stood out that those people who out real note this is how the world's 1st super recognize are unit came into being it's now led by elliot pour it, who'd also been unaware of his special talent. it was on he really in about 2012, the metropolitan place said, is new on a super recognized listen. my 1st thought was, well, was the super recognizers and apparently was because i was making successful

identifications. i'm from in a wanted posters of criminals. this ability turned out to be the key to solving the alice grass case. a few days after the 14 year old went missing, a woman living in the same district in london reported her partner is missing. he was already known to the police and was identified as a possible suspect. the super recognizers poured over cctv footage along the route that alice had taken to see if they could spot the man just on his way home. and sure enough, eliot pour it and his team spotted him, they noticed that the possible suspect kept returning to a particular spot at the riverside after palace crosses disappearance. what did you like? so he went back to the senior officer who is investigating a case and he said, look, we think we've found sal cans and changing his closing out to the crime scene. and

that was when they found her just over a month after her disappearance, the parents of 14 year old alice grass had their worst fears, confirmed the body of the young girl was found in the river. brent. at that stage, there was still no sign of the suspected killer super recognizers can also help solve other crimes. apart from murder. one of the most successful cases we've had was with serial shoplifter. we had one super recognizers who, you know, separated by a couple of weeks with memory when that you have seen that guy before. i have seen him in the, in our database and then we started seeing him for 5 times and then we really went hunting that see vantage of having a database of all images of criminals and images from crime scenes. because then

we're able to go back for these on so crimes and we had him eventually for about 40 free ah offences. facial recognition software wouldn't have helped. here it needs better footage than the detectives generally have access to agreement university in london, psychologist josh davis is studying super, recognize her powers using tests that he's continually refining with the help of the police investigators. i once one stand the science behind this. i also think that the more we know about this, the more we understand about human memory, and maybe it's got further applications that no one's even thought about yet. a few days ago, davis showed one of elliot ports, team members, short video clips of people that she's now being asked to identify in photos.

the test is intended to reveal how long super recognizers memory skills last davis and pour it are happy with the results. the super recognizers team leader sees the work with the university as vital because we're operating in an area of a place where that is pretty much undefined. and as you know, experimental, it's almost piloting. um, all the forces from around the world are looking our models. in the case of alice grass, the body of her suspected killer was found a few days after the discovery of her body. the 41 year old was found in the woods. he hanged himself apparently for fear of being captured the police are convinced that he would have been convicted. the evidence found at the crime scene was to damming my traces of his dna on the teenager shoes and

a cigarette stub. but the tip that led the police to the body in the 1st place came from the super recognizers. while the super cannot unit in the future, i think will expand or across the world. the 1st a murder saw with fingerprints was, is about 2 miles from where you are no 9 to no 5, no to scotland yard out. so take that out and show everybody else. so to do fingerprints. and then dna came along and, and the british police out to the same. so now we're super recognizers. this is the 3rd step. and, and so we've got to expand this because there's no reason why there are no sheep recognizes in germany or in, in america or anywhere else in the world. super recognizers tend to be deployed to solve crimes after they've been committed. but sometimes, for example, during big events,

they can stop planned crimes from control rooms. they monitor events by a video link. if they identify known criminals or suspects, for example, police can intervene. but of course they can't do anything if for example, an unknown sleeper is planning an attack. so even in the cctv capital of the world, there's no such thing as total security there are animals that use tools to secure food and learn through observation. these is unknown to have an impressive level of intelligence. parents have developed their own solutions for specific problems and fuse form intelligence to improve their efficiency. while dolphins or not disability, men's only intelligence front. and there are countless other animals where we know

how small they are. but our next report deals with the species that are higher fly is then you might think scientists and bull whom university have known for a long time, the pigeons aren't stupid, but are in fact highly intelligent. they're visual memory is phenomenal and their master is abrupt learning. they can memorize 700 images and recall them with ease. this is lam pigeon, 094. she is about to prove how powerful her working memory is to neuro scientist, semi 7 chick. these are the images to be present to the pictures the prison, dental types of items. one of them contains images with the shape, information, and color information. and the one can contrast this route. only colors are great

with no champion formation or color information. and at the end of the day, we want to see if the information like the amount of information to provide to this animals can affect their working memory performance. this is the main theme of horrors. pigeons tenacity and their equity are legendary. they peg away at the monitors for hours on end, but it has to be quiet. we need to whisper still as it's hard and is presented. imagine if it killed it and that it, it 6 seconds, and then it, beg your side, it back. put it answer here was wrong. so that's why he shouted the lives and didn't provide food. but as it regards daniel to provide food, so deep grid up think that these his did was exhibiting wired for 6 seconds. and then that you, according it was

a correct response. i've got already been to saw this by their time. it takes exact to wonder days for them between these internal they're all can come and then 094 is off to the races. she doesn't know what give up means owner good to current wants to better understand why thought processes and such different brains as pigeons and human brains function. so similarly, our own working memory is a good place to begin for a comparative experiment. then vio lence, the fatherhood, when we have to remember the color red, then inside ourselves, we secretly repeat, read, read, read, read, read. so we'll store the idea of you, but how does the pigeon memorize it of us? and what we're looking at now though, i'm still not sure we'll find it out, is could it be that a pigeon rather than using words which obviously can instead codes these stimuli by a different movement and it was on the vehicle could such as doing one thing on

read the was must, and another on green, 0 us mar. i'd still an open question. the boom team has been able to show that the cerebral cortex with which we think is not only found in mammals. a new laser technique has shown that bird brains also have a structure resembling our cortex, with its typical horizontal and radial layers where complex thought takes place. you would need that because they make an extremely detailed analysis of everything they see with the vertical layer landing. they coordinate it all with the radio layers, the honest madonna just want these structures are capable of becomes visible under the microscope. but musings it, i've lucy here, individual nerve cells marked in dark wood in that and with the technology we used, you can see these dark colored cells communicating with her nerve cells, mit and little nelson sand can. we can practically see who's talking with wholly to,

to meet them. the recently made discovery as groundbreaking, something as complex as this was expected and mammals, but not in birds. of the instant licksey. at 1st glance, the 2 brains looked so differently money, but the near you go in the more closely you look like you can see the same basic principles throughout cbs. the closer we look, the more they looked the same. that doesn't make masterminds of pigeons. in the bird world alone, crows are far superior. yet pigeon still possess astounding cognitive abilities. it's impressive how they recognize and contextualize pictures, and even learn if a sequence of letters forms an english word or not. pigeons are totally underrated . this machine is a bit of a shame because and they're running about all over the place and it would be nice to say, wow,

a grand master of working memory comes to visit me. that would be cool. if i let is read why i'm leaving you. there's no such thing as to smart, right? if you have a sons related question, send us a video text or voice message. if we answer it on the show, we'll send you a little surprise as a thank you. come on, just ask scientifically, memories are generated by information they stored and now sensory memory for a few seconds. working memory, stores information for a few minutes. and our long term memory stores information for hours, at least, and usually for many years. but memory is not always reliable.

ah, the human memory is a huge archive that works like a well oiled machine. well, most of the time. but not always. sometimes there things we just cannot retrieve while the memories land on us uninvited. there is some we simply can't shake off. here are 3 classic tricks our memories play on us. oh, 1st up, the tip of the tongue phenomenon. something we've all experienced at some point was at acs, his name again. hang on on the tip of my tongue. ah, this is what's going on upstairs. recollection of one particular person is stored

in a number of locations. their appearance in the visual center, sound of their voice in the auditory center, and the approximate number of syllables in their name in the language center. in order to identify the person, the brain has to dig up and paste together a sufficient number of those features. and that's where it's easy to get confused. a similar sounding name might 1st pop into your head because it's available sooner . so what's the solution? one answer is to turn your attention to something completely different than remove the spanner in the works and eventually the penny dropped. oh sean claude van damme . of course. trick number 2. 0, factory memory. that is common reasoning to oda. it's not just unsolicited visual memories that sometimes bother us, not smell. like i know that from again. and suddenly you might be haunted by

a distinctly unwelcome memory. why is that? it's pretty simple. with all our senses, smell is the only one directly connected to the brains emotional center, the a medulla, and also to the adjacent hippocampus, the area where memories are created. therefore, odors and the recollections associated with them are particularly vivid memory. cues, o. number 3, the e were more catchy tune memories that refused to go. it can be very annoying. like a song you just have to sing along to the songs that you can't get out of your head tend to resurface when we're busy doing mundane tasks. and now working memory has some free capacity to stave off board amount brain browsers through its archives and pulls out a specific song in a similar style to a record player. and in our heads, we either he a music we adore,

or that we absolutely hate this triggers the stimulus that makes us repeat the melody all there expect to ourselves. that creates a never ending loop as you're singing leads to you hearing the tune internally, which in turn encourages for the singing. the remedy. research is recommend listening to the song once bull the way through to the bitter end. and then bury the memory deep deep down in your brain's archive. 2 2 tend to music and the days nights that is a superstar of classical music in his own day. and now he composed with 1000

i and those legs and said to have magical effects on this i just listening to mozart really make you smarter. the so called mozart effect was identified by researchers in 1993. 0, they gave a group of college students a 10 minute audio sample to listen to oh, with soundtracks ranging from silent to a relaxation tape. adkins you we go to a mozart piano concerto. oh, the students were then asked to take a spatial intelligence test. oh,

oh. oh. those subjects who had been listening to mozart performed better than the other groups registering spatial i. q scores, 8 or 9 points higher. not a huge leap, but certainly a jump on that said the intelligence boost lasted all of 15 minutes, said most. and then it disappeared. but that surprising if short lived effect triggered a media frenzy. mozart makes you smart, was in all the headlines. ah, the impact was especially great in the united states. babies born in georgia and tennessee were given a mozart cd, while kindergarten, kids in florida were treated to an hour of mozart music every day. the scientific community also seemed enthralled. researchers reenacted the original experiment but struggle to confirm the mozart effect. it was replicated in some tests but not in

others. oh. 2 meanwhile, there was a suspicion that the music merely improved the mood of test subjects, giving their brain some brief stimulation. another question soon arose. does it have to be mozart? oh, as it turned out, music by other artists had the same effect, whether as sonata by schubert or a song by the 19 ninety's british band to blur i. so the notion that only mozart makes you smarter and permanently so was just a myth. but the big question remains, how does music affect the brain? oh,

or grey matter is in fact colored by practically every thing we do. that includes listening to music and even more so playing music. what ever the music, practicing and performing, leave a mark. any drummers, the neural pathways linking the 2 halves of the brain, tend to be fewer but thicker, which is perhaps why they're so good at certain swift and complex movements. surely a well trained fit brain is capable of more than a standard specimen. well, there are plenty of studies that claim playing music makes you smarter. experiments showed that people with a musical background, we're better at certain things. they might have better language memory skills, for example, or were better able to remember things they had seen movie

children in particular performed better on the memory front end and intelligence tests if they had at least a year of music lessons. the problem is, even if playing an instrument goes along with higher i q test scores, it doesn't mean the one cause the other. ah, i played the violin and was an ace in physics. wouldn't he have been a science? was even if he had never learned an instrument playing music and being intelligent, may well co occur. but whether one contributes causally to the other is highly questionable. more than a 100 studies over the past 20 years have claimed there is a causal connection without sufficient evidence to back up the claim. like muscles, the brain can be given a workout. but training in one activity doesn't mean you perform better in others.

if 2 skills are very different, being good at the one is not likely to make you better if the other, practicing the piano all day is likely to make you a better pianist. but will it make you better at solving differential equations? hardly. still practicing an instrument not only lets you play music, it can also teach you that practice does make a significant difference. that can boost your self confidence and willingness to really apply yourself. so to recapitulate, does music make you smarter? well, there's no straightforward answer, but quite apart from any possible link to intelligence. music is a treasure and a joy in its own right. whether in the form of mozart pop or hip hop

with formal from the wonderful world of science and tech. fond us on the web at d. w dot com slash science and on twitter, that's all from tomorrow to day. from now. we hope you'll join us again next week for another fascinating addition of our science show. until then, but by with ah, ah, ah! with

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love and respect ah ah ah, this is due to the news life from berlin. germany tries to head off the threat from the arm across corona virus variant. protesters vent their anger as a government introduces new restrictions on private events and public gatherings. it also calls on the on vaccinated to step up and get the job. also coming up on the show, russia supreme court shuts down the country's meeting,

human rights group. the n g o memorial dedicates itself to documenting the atrocities of russia's stalinist past. will that era's crimes that been forgotten? and looking back at the chaotic scenes at cavil airport, following the us with school from afghanistan, we meet some of the desperate afghans who made it act as a remember those left behind ah, i'm pablo foias. welcome to the program. you corona, virus restrictions have come into force here in germany as it attempts to slow the spread of the arm across variant with new year's eve. fast approaching, the government is placing tighter limits on public and private celebrations. it's also urging those still unvaccinated to get the job just before the new restrictions took effect. people protested in cities across germany. ah,

hundreds of people demand to pass tensions ran high on the streets of tito in the eastern state of saxony on monday night. just one of many protests organized the cross country against the government's corona, by restrictions and covey. 19 vaccines. it was a tense, but a peaceful protest. in the nearby town of foutz and the police were attacked with fireworks and butters. i say, attempted to break up an authorized protest. authorities reported at least 10 officers injured in the capital berlin. there is a little understanding of the violence that has erupted and for those who still refused to get vaccinated. but you know, we all get that every mandatory vaccine where we go on holiday without questioning it. so what's happening now is ridiculous. i'm almost finished. i think it's not necessary to take that as treats and attack police offices to use violence. you should do it peacefully. with audio rate,

all in the same boat. so why do some have to kick up a fuss going from is rise. it or i don't know if it's the right way, but people probably don't know who else to express themselves on. almost a year to day after the vaccination campaign started berlin, mayor of francisco goofy visited a covey 19 intensive care unit. she repeated the government's plea to the quarter of the population, steel and vaccinated in germany. licensees, his infant get harness unaided, as i can only say it again. and again. the people lying here in this hospital, in russia, many of them are probably thinking, if only i had done it, is perhaps, then it would have prevented this from happening like, oh gosh, probably their opponents to the vaccine and measures that over half of the population supports measures now in place that officials are bracing themselves for a new wave of infections with the more transmissible ami quinn variance which could of the when japanese critical health care infrastructure. germany's constitutional

court has ordered parliament to immediately issue laws, protecting people with disabilities in pandemic related triage situations. trash is the process of prioritizing patients for treatment. for example, if hospitals are unable to cope with demand for intensive care, the case was filed by a group of people with disabilities and pre existing conditions. they expressed fears they would be denied treatment if the pandemic pushes hospitals to their limits. well, joining us for more is professor peter polk. he is the former chair of the german ethics council and specializes in the ethics of technical and scientific interference with human life. hi professor, dab rock. i'm welcome to the show. now, why did people with disabilities feel they needed to go to court to get a ruling on this 1st, thanks for having me. and they are concerned that because of their fear of disabilities, they might be om, disadvantage in case,

in the case of shortage of medical treatment. this is the reason why they went to cultural with the constitutional court. and the constitutional court came to the ruling that a legislator hust immediately and rapidly to change the legal of frame in order to protect these people. right? well then from an ethical point of view and how can doctors make a choice of who lives there who dies in their hospital? first of all, it's fair to say that this is one of the most challenging situations for doctors at all. because of the potential shortage of medical treatment. so they have to balance on the one hand

a to meet the legal requirements. on the other hand, they have also to meet ethical criteria as the co spect of a surveillance of survival. and on the other hand, old, so the basic basic dignity of each human being and this is extremely difficult to balance in this given a catastrophic situation. and therefore, what we have to look for this balancing in order not to limit the scope of action for a, for doctors and on the other hand, nevertheless, to keep the frame of the constitutional frame. and this is soaks, treme difficult to manage. professor peta. dab, rock,

thank you for joining us on the w. let's turn now to some of their stories making headlines. i guess iran's foreign minister says he's confident a new nuclear deal can be quickly agreed with world powers talks between the west and iran on its nuclear program resumed. and the austrian capital vienna on monday, one condition for to ron is that it be allowed to export crude oil as part of a new agreement. bolivian emergency services say they have rescued at least 48 people stranded by flood waters, heavy rains, heat, central regions of the country last week, affecting farming and damaging hundreds of homes. authorities believe 13 people have died so far in the flooding. members of jordan's parliament have traded blows during a debate about gender equality and changes to the constitution. the punch up began when deputies discussed adding the female, i'm to amendments that guaranteed equal rights for all citizens. no one was

seriously injured. as white space. x vander e long musk is facing a social media backlash in china. that's after beijing said it's space station, nearly collided with mosques, starling satellites, the chinese foreign ministry, said it station was forced to take a vase of action twice, sparking heavy criticism of musk on china's social media platform waiver in the latest low to russian civil society, the supreme court has ordered the closing of memorial, the country's most, i respected human rights group, it defends the rights of political prisoners in russia, and helped victims of soviet era repression. the court agreed with the prosecutions argument that the organization violated a law on quote, foreign agents memorial and it's supporter, say the charges are politically motivated. russia's oldest and most important human rights organization now disbanded, supporters defied

a protest band to gather in front of memorials headquarters. they said the decision was politically motivated. was the idea of critics of being eliminated. so is the opposition. any one who wants to lit the mask off russia and looked critically at its history that is being eliminated abuse. now, your distorted memorial was classified as if foreign agent. that meant the organization had to comply with various requirements. the court found it in violation of those rules. the n g o is now banned and must stop its work in russia . for many memorial represents the historical conscience of the country. it aims to make sure that the reign of terror in the soviet union under joseph stalin and the inhumanity of the gulag prison camp system are not forgotten . when earlier this month, russian president vladimir putin accused memorial of rehabilitating the reputations

of nazi collaborators in world war 2 was a moment. views of the organization denied all allegations and wants to appeal. it's representatives say they may take the case to the european court of human rights. and now as the year draws to a close, we want to take a look at some of the lasting images of 2021. the united states is withdrawal from afghanistan was as chaotic as it was, sudden, as international forces departed, thousands of locals tried to leave 2 hundreds got on to the runway at capital airport. desperate to get out. such was their desperation. that is one u. s. military plane taxied down the runway some clung to the body of the aircraft, and many fell to their death after the plane took off. the u. s. didn't did take some who could show they had the right to leave. others gambled on the yeah, humanity of the soldiers at the airport. well well, the w's terry schultz. mad a couple. who managed to leave with some but not all of their children. hello,

less soft. he says he understands though shocking scenes of desperate afghan parents passing their children to american soldiers a cobble airport. i cannot remember people way became because even if anyone one wanted to live marked for assassination by the islamic state, due to his work on national reconciliation, sofie was among those trying to get his family into the airport onto a plane to promised refuge in the netherlands sophie was in hiding in late august when he was told in the middle of the night to go to the airport. he tried to gather his family from the different locations where they moved for their safety. his wife missed the call. his brother brought the children who were staying with him, but it was so dangerous at the airport. sophia, initially sent them back. i saw that the people who are in there was fighting and the people injured. after 24 hours, he managed to make it onto a dutch flight with 4 of his children, his wife and the others would be forced to flee through pakistan throughout the

ordeal. 20 month old. hi and never cried. her father says treating the trip as a great adventure, which they almost do now starting over in the netherlands. tanina satari is doing the same, a gender adviser for the dutch embassy in cobble. she became an asylum seeker overnight, literally, despite what her dutch colleagues had promised. i remembered the last night we were with them. how like, you know, like a family, we were there and they were talking to us and then we will be there with you and we will not leave you if something goes wrong. the next day the taliban took control of cobble. when satari and other afghan employees showed up for work, they were alone. no warning, they just left us and we, it was a big shock. the dutch foreign and defense ministers would later resign in acknowledgement of how badly the evacuation effort was managed. fortunately, orders did come through to evacuate satari and her immediate family. it took 3

tries and during taliban beatings, but she says she knew, especially as a woman, that flight was her only hope for survival every time that we were going back, it was so disappointing and i was like, if i stay here i will die even if i, if i'm alive, i will not have a life. she's not sure yet what that life will be. she and her family are living in a refugee camp awaiting permanent housing and dutch passports, domina satari and colorless sophie both know as difficult as this was. they are the lucky ones. they speak of their heartbreak at not having been able to help others escape. sofie says 2 of his former colleagues who were not evacuated despite his please have since been killed. churchill reporting, they're now a bit of tennis news ahead of the upcoming australian open. dominic team has decided to play with the ground slammed you to arrest injury. the 2020 us open winner is the latest big name to withdraw from the tournament. joining the likes of roger federer and serina williams, among others,

the 28 year old austrian was who was ranked a 3rd in the world, hasn't played since june and has slipped to 15th in the rankings as a result. authorities in columbia have rescued a rare big cat that might not have otherwise survived. vets have been working around the clock to nurse the albino jaguar, randi cub, back to health jack run. these are a type of human native to north and south america. but this is thought to be the 1st albino of its kind to be found in columbia. since her chances of survival in the wilder limited, she'll be transferred to a conservation park when she's received full medical care. all right, while you're watching dw news, here's a reminder of the top story we're following for you. russia supreme court has

ordered the closure of the country's most respected human rights group of memorial chronicles to primes of russian state repression and advocates for victims to move cops a year of fact, ends on the russian several something to watch. and the w news. i'm pub affiliate in berlin, i'll be back shortly with the business and iron tilting. we'll be here from the top of the next hour. and don't forget, you can keep up to date on our website, d, w dot com or follow on social media. to take care and see you ah, my 1st vice i was a sewing machine. i come from women are bound by their social goals. mm hm. in.