Musical memory refers to the ability to remember music-related information, such as melodic content and other progressions of tones or pitches. The differences found between linguistic memory and musical memory have led researchers to theorize that musical memory is encoded differently from language.

Recent research has demonstrated that the normal right hemisphere of the brain responds to melody holistically, whereas the left hemisphere of the brain evaluates melodic passages in a more analytic fashion.

For instance, while listening to the melody of the popular carol “Silent Night”, the right hemisphere thinks, “Ah, yes, Silent Night”, while the left hemisphere thinks, “two sequences: the first a literal repetition, the second a repetition at different pitch levels… ah, yes, Silent Night by Franz Gruber, typical pastorate folk style.”

The brain for the most part works well when each hemisphere performs its own function while solving a task or problem, and the two hemispheres are quite complementary. However, situations arise musical memory when the two modes are in conflict, resulting in one hemisphere interfering with the operation of the other hemisphere.

Sleep timing is controlled by the circadian clock, sleep-wake homeostasis, and in humans, willed behavior. The circadian clock is an inner timekeeping, temperature-fluctuating, enzyme-controlling mechanism that works in tandem with adenosine, a neurotransmitter that inhibits many of the bodily processes associated with wakefulness.

Adenosine is created over the course of the day, with high levels of adenosine leading to sleepiness. In diurnal animals, sleepiness occurs as the circadian element causes the release of the hormone melatonin and a gradual decrease in core body temperature.

The timing is affected by one’s chronotype, yet it is the circadian rhythm that determines the ideal timing of a correctly structured and restorative sleep episode. The need for sleep as a function of the amount of time elapsed since the last adequate sleep episode must be balanced against the circadian element for satisfactory sleep.

Along with corresponding messages from the circadian clock, this tells the body it needs to sleep. Sleep offset, or awakening, is primarily determined by circadian rhythm. A person who regularly awakens at an early hour will generally not be able to sleep much later than his or her normal waking time, even if moderately sleep-deprived.

A philosophical zombie is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience. When a zombie is poked with a sharp object, for example, it does not feel any pain though it behaves exactly as if it does.

The notion of a philosophical zombie is used mainly in thought experiments intended to support arguments against forms of physicalism such as materialism and functionalism. Since a zombie is physiologically indistinguishable from human beings, its hypothetical possibility is an argument for a consciousness that is more than the sum of neurological pathways and brain states.

Though philosophical zombies are widely used in thought experiments, the detailed articulation of the concept is not always the same. Philosophical zombies were introduced primarily to argue against specific types of physicalism such as behaviorism, according to which mental states exist solely as behavior.

Belief, desire, thought, consciousness, and so on, are simply certain kinds of behavior or tendencies towards behaviors. A philosophical zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a normal human being, but lacks conscious experiences, is therefore not logically possible according to the behaviorist.

A chronotype is an attribute of animals and human beings describing the time of the day their physical functions such as body temperature, cognitive faculties, eating and sleeping reach a certain level. This phenomenon refers to people as early birds or night owls, where morning people wake up early and are most alert in the first part of the day, and evening people are most alert in the late evening hours and prefer to go to bed late.

Humans are normally diurnal creatures that are active in the daytime. As with most other diurnal animals, human activity-rest patterns are endogenously controlled by circadian rhythms. Most people are neither evening nor morning types but lie somewhere in between. Estimates vary, but up to half are either morning or evening people. People who share a chronotype, morningness or eveningness, have similar activity pattern timing: sleep, appetite, exercise, study etc.

Normal variation in chronotypes encompasses sleep/wake cycles that are from about two hours earlier to about two hours later than average. Extremes outside of this range can cause a person difficulty in participating in normal work, school and social activities. If a person’s early bird or night owl tendencies are strong and intractable to the point of disallowing normal participation in society, the person is considered to have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder.

The Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, or MEQ, is used to conduct research on this topic. A short version can be found online. Several other assessment tools have been developed such as the Composite Scale of Morningness, the Lark-Owl Chronotype Indicator, and the Munich Chronotype Questionnaire. Some of these are designed with particular situations in mind, such as shift work scheduling, travel fatigue and jet lag, athletic performance or best timing of medical procedures.

The American Alligator inhabits wetlands that frequently overlap with human-populated areas. They reach adulthood at about 10 years of age, at which time they are about 7 feet long. The oldest males may grow to be 16 feet and weigh up to 1,200 pounds during a lifespan of 30 or more years.

Adult alligators will eat wild boars, deer, dogs of all sizes, and livestock including cattle and sheep. The gizzards of alligators often contain gastroliths. The function of these stones is to grind up food in the stomach and help with digestion. This is important because alligators swallow their food whole. These gastroliths are also used in buoyancy control.

Alligators generally have a green, brown, or nearly black color with a creamy white underside. Algae-laden waters produce greener skin, while tannic acid from overhanging trees can often produce darker skin.

Although alligators have no vocal cords, males bellow loudly to attract mates by sucking air into their lungs and blowing it out in intermittent, deep-toned roars. Male alligators engage in infrasound bellowing with their midsection very slightly submerged, making the surface of the water sprinkle. Recently it was discovered that on spring nights alligators gather in large numbers for group courtship, known as “alligator dances”.

The geostrophic wind is the theoretical wind that would result from an exact balance between the Coriolis effect and the pressure gradient force. This condition is called geostrophic balance. The geostrophic wind is directed parallel to isobars or lines of constant pressure at a given height.

Air naturally moves from areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure, due to the pressure gradient force. As soon as the air starts to move, however, the Coriolis force deflects it. The deflection is to the right in the northern hemisphere, and to the left in the southern hemisphere.

As the air moves from the high pressure area, its speed increases, and so does its Coriolis deflection. The deflection increases until the Coriolis and pressure gradient forces are in geostrophic balance, At this point, the air flow is no longer moving from high to low pressure, but instead moves along an isobar.

Flow of ocean water is also largely geostrophic. Measurements of density as a function of depth in the ocean are used to infer geostrophic currents. Satellite altimeters are also used to measure sea surface height anomaly, which permits a calculation of the geostrophic current at the surface.

Philosophical realism is the belief that our reality is completely independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs and intellectual constructs. Those who profess philosophical realism also typically believe that truth consists of a belief’s correspondence to reality.

Philosophical realists tend to believe that whatever we believe now is only an approximation of reality and that every new observation brings us closer to understanding reality. It functions as an opposite to idealism and anti-realism.

This type of realism may be thought of with respect to other minds, the past, the future, universals, mathematical entities, moral categories, the material world, or even thought.

The philosophy is often relative to a specific area. One might, for example, be a realist about physical matter but an idealist about ethics. The high necessity of specifying the area in which a realist debate is made has been increasingly acknowledged.

Radionics is the use of blood, hair, a signature, or other substances unique to the person as a focus to supposedly heal a patient from afar. The concept behind radionics originated in the early 1900s with Albert Abrams. Radionics is not based on any scientific evidence, and contradicts the principles of physics and biology.

According to radionics practitioners, a healthy person will have certain energy frequencies moving through their body that define health, while an unhealthy person will exhibit other, different energy frequencies that define disorders. Radionic devices purport to diagnose and heal by applying appropriate frequencies to balance the discordant frequencies of sickness.

In one form of radionics, some blood on a bit of filter paper is attached to a device Abrams called a dynamizer, which is attached by wires to a string of other devices and then to the forehead of a healthy volunteer, facing west in a dim light. By tapping on on his abdomen and searching for areas of “dullness”, disease in the donor of the blood is diagnosed by proxy. Having done this, the practitioner may use a special device known as an oscilloclast to broadcast vibrations at the patient in order to attempt to heal them.

Albert Abrams claimed to detect such frequencies and cure people by matching their frequencies. He developed thirteen devices and became a millionaire leasing his devices. The American Medical Association described him as the “dean of gadget quacks,” and his devices were definitively proven useless by an independent investigation commissioned by Scientific American in 1924.

Modern practitioners now conceptualize these devices merely as a focusing aid to a practitioner’s dowsing abilities, and claim that there is no longer any need for the device to have any demonstrable function. Indeed, Abrams’ black boxes had no purpose of their own, being merely obfuscated collections of wires and electronic parts.