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Artist Amalia Ulman created an online persona and recorded it on Instagram to ask questions about gender online. Cadence Kinsey asks what her project tells us about our own social media identities. facebook Twitter reddit WhatsApp Google + Email

Fact can be stranger than fiction. This is especially true of black holes, as Prof Stephen Hawking explains.For instance as soon as you entered the black hole, reality would split in two. "In one, you would be instantly incinerated, and in the other you would plunge on into the black hole utterly unharmed," as we have previously explored.In the 2016 Reith lectures broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Prof Hawking further examines and challenges the latest scientific thinking about black holes.

An elderly Chinese woman is only able to speak English after suffering a stroke, it's been reported. Liu Jaiyu, a 94-year-old former English teacher, has found herself no longer able to speak Chinese after parts of her brain relating to native language were damaged by a cerebral infarction, the local Hunan TV reports. Television pictures show her in bed, answering simple questions in English, which means the nursing staff are having to brush up on their language skills. "She greets me in the morning using English, after she's eaten her meals in the afternoon she uses English," one nurse tells the TV. "My memory of the language isn't too good, sometimes I don't understand what she's saying!" A doctor at the hospital says that Ms Liu is suffering from paralysis of all her limbs, as well as an "obstacle" to her language functions. "It seems the part of her brain responsible for her mother tongue has been damaged, however the part that uses English has been preserved," Li Yanfang says. There have been rare cases where patients develop a different accent after a stroke, migraine or head trauma. But Ms Liu's case appears different because she has apparently turned to an already-learned language. Experts say that the complex Chinese language requires the use of both parts of the brain, while English only uses one side.

Archaeologists and officials have expressed outrage about the bulldozing of the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud by Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Many concert-goers are often frustrated by the sound of people coughing during classical music performances. These coughers have now become the subject of an academic paper concerning "the economics of concert etiquette", which analyses a stark fact: people appear to cough more in concerts than in they do in normal life. The German economist Andreas Wagener told the Today programme: "The statistics indicate people cough during concerts twice as much as they do in normal life." Concert pianist Susan Tomes said: "I certainly do notice it, but I think it has something to do with the fact that people have gotten so used to hearing music amplified. "Many types of music are so loud, but classical music is not, and when you go to a classical concert, you forget how quiet acoustic instruments are." First broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on Monday 28 January 2012.

As a curious race we have always liked to know where we are, but it is now almost impossible not to know - our phones, computers and sat navs keep us continually co-ordinated, and through them we are involuntarily tracked ourselves. Once the preserve and privilege of the rich and influential, maps and accurate wayfinding have suddenly come to feel like a birthright

But these days we are all really at the centre of our maps, which is both a useful and egocentric thing. A thousand years ago Jerusalem stood at the centre of the Christian world view, or if you lived in China it was Youzhou. But now it is us, a throbbing green dot on our handhelds. We no longer travel from A to B but from Me to B, and we spread out maps on the floor or on our laps in a car only with wistful nostalgia.

It is still too early to say whether a lessening in our spatial ability and perspective, and our ability to remember landmarks, will decrease that area in our hippocampus that serves as the engine room for such skills, but it is highly likely. An examination of the brains of cab drivers has shown a great expansion in that area due, it is thought, to the retention of many miles of street plans.

But now experts say a reliance on sat-navs and smartphone map apps is undermining map-reading skills. So here are five reasons why you should love maps and resist the easy attraction of the sat-nav.

ostering innovation and helping people to think analytically,

Called simply Bronze, it celebrates a metal so important it has its own age of history attached to it, and so responsive to the artist's skill that it breathes life into gods, humans, mythological creatures and animals with equal success.

It is remarkable to think that had Bronze been mounted say 15 years ago, the portrait of the past that it delivered would have been subtly different. History is very far from a done deal.

Churchill has been labelled as the greatest orator of the 20th Century but he was not a natural public speaker.The prime minister had a slight stutter and a lisp, prompting him to practise his delivery for hours. His wartime speeches are recognised as some of the greatest ever made but many of those famous soundbites were recorded after the event as the House of Commons was not wired for audio recording at the time. In 1951, the BBC persuaded Churchill to record some of his wartime communications for posterity but it was not always a smooth process.

Helena Merriman asks why people listen to sad music. A recent study has shown that sad music has become increasingly popular, but why do people choose to listen to it, and what goes on in the brain and the body when they do so? Helena speaks to Japanese pianist and music researcher Dr Ai Kawakami who has some surprising answers about some of the positive feelings people experience when they listen to sad music. American writer Amanda Stern tells Helena why she regularly listens (and cries) to sad music and British composer Debbie Wiseman, known for her moving TV and film scores, explains what makes a piece of music sound sad. You’ll also hear pieces of sad music suggested by BBC listeners from all over the world.

So-called killer robots are due to be discussed at the UN Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva. A report presented to the meeting will call for a moratorium on their use while the ethical questions they raise are debated. The robots are machines programmed in advance to take out people or targets, which - unlike drones - operate autonomously on the battlefield. They are being developed by the US, UK and Israel, but have not yet been used. Supporters say the "lethal autonomous robots", as they are technically known, could save lives, by reducing the number of soldiers on the battlefield. But human rights groups argue they raise serious moral questions about how we wage war, reports the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva. They include: Who takes the final decision to kill? Can a robot really distinguish between a military target and civilians?

People have long seen faces in the Moon, in oddly-shaped vegetables and even burnt toast, but a Berlin-based group is scouring the planet via satellite imagery for human-like features. What's behind our desire to see faces in our surroundings, asks Lauren Everitt. Most people have never heard of pareidolia. But nearly everyone has experienced it. Anyone who has looked at the Moon and spotted two eyes, a nose and a mouth has felt the pull of pareidolia. It's "the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist", according to the World English Dictionary. It's picking a face out of a knotted tree trunk or finding zoo animals in the clouds.