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Anthony Storr, in his excellent book Music and the Mind, stresses that in all societies, a primary function of music is collective and communal, to bring and bind people together

People with Tourette's syndrome—including many I know who are professional musicians—may become composed, tic-free, when they listen to or perform music; but they may also be driven by certain kinds of music into an uncontrollable ticcing that is entrained with the beat

There is a wide range of sensitivity to the emotional power of music, ranging from virtual indifference at one extreme (Freud was said to be indifferent to music, and never wrote about it), to a sensitivity that can barely be controlled. Individuals with Williams syndrome, for example, though they have severe visual and cognitive defects, are often musically gifted, and usually extravagantly sensitive to the emotional impact of music. I have seen few sights more extraordinary than a group of 40 young people with Williams syndrome breaking into uncontrollable weeping at tender or sad music, or uncontrollably excited if the music is animated.

The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact because the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time.[1]

The first quantitative estimate of the speed of light was made in 1676 by Rømer (see Rømer's determination of the speed of light).[83][84] From the observation that the periods of Jupiter's innermost moon Io appeared to be shorter when the Earth was approaching Jupiter than when receding from it, he concluded that light travels at a finite speed, and estimated that it takes light 22 minutes to cross the diameter of Earth's orbit. Christiaan Huygens combined this estimate with an estimate for the diameter of the Earth's orbit to obtain an estimate of speed of light of 220000 km/s, 26% lower than the actual value.[105]

Beginning in the 1880s several experiments were performed to try to detect this motion, the most famous of which is the experiment performed by Albert A. Michelson and Edward W. Morley in 1887.[128] The detected motion was always less than the observational error. Modern experiments indicate that the two-way speed of light is isotropic (the same in every direction) to within 6 nanometres per second.[129]

About 99% of U.S. households (the total of which are in the 115 million range) have a TV, and 56% have cable. Compare that to Netflix, which has more than 48 million members worldwide. That means its entire global viewership is still not even half the U.S. However, that's not bad for a company founded in 1997, tackling a nearly 64-year-old industry.

In the summer months, it's easy to assume Netflix usage would go through the roof, thanks in part to younger students who now have three free months of time.

While Netflix doesn't share specific data on its viewers, spokeswoman Jenny McCabe said the site doesn't acquire more subscribers during the summer months. Rather, it picks up more viewers in Q1 (January, February and March) and Q4 (October, November and December).

These are the “ideal forms” of each of these characters. Yet only one of them is ever viewed sexually to outsiders, the women.

Both are genetic mutants, by any stretch of the imagination, but one is sexual, and the other isn’t.

While viewers enjoy watching episodes of their favorite TV shows back-to-back, advertisers suffer because video-on-demand (VOD) providers do not want to alienate their viewers by running advertisements.

Critics say that the company’s reliance on subscriptions alone poses a problem, because an increase in price will translate into lost subscribers.

This loyal customer base can also be used to leverage the findings of a study by Annalect, – Omnicom Media Group’s marketing technology platform – which suggests that binge viewers don’t actually mind ads.

The study has found that robot-assisted AR based play showed improved learning effects, compared to the conventional play, in language and creativity and this is attributed to the operational flexibility, novelty, robotic mediation and capturing the attention of the children. The result was also made possible in part by designing an effective interface for the teachers to control the robots and manage the simultaneously occurring tasks.

The study shows that women who possess these body image concerns are twice as likely to compare their own bodies to those of the thin models in the advertisements

When whales and other large animals flourish in the ocean, they carry a substantial amount of carbon to the sea floor upon dying. Whales and other large marine vertebrates could effectively function as carbon credits

About 160,000 tons of carbon per year could be removed from the atmosphere if whale populations were restored to pre-industrial levels. This amount is equivalent to adding 843 hectares of forest

Restoring the whale populations compares favorably with unproven schemes such as iron fertilization in removing carbon from the ocean surface

Pandora continues to grow with 250 million registered users

There are one billion FM radios in the US and 160 million smartphones and 160 million PCs, so it’s still a subset of the FM marketplace.

Pittman doesn’t believe streaming hours will overtake traditional radio in his lifetime.