Emily Brontë, one of the three gifted Brontë sisters, is the author of the famous English novel Wuthering Heights. She was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, in England, the fifth of six children. In 1820, her family moved to Haworth,  39  her mother died in 1821 and her two elder sisters died in 1825. Her father, a minister, was a stern and sullen man, and the aunt who took over the household was more strict than loving. The four surviving children became a close-knit group and  40  one another with emotional and creative support.  41  in a small and remote community, the four siblings paired off and used their unusual literary gifts to write about imaginary lands. Emily and her younger sister Anne  42  the imaginary country of Gondal and wrote literature for it that included legends and poetry. Gondal remains a source of Emily’s later art, providing the setting, characters, and situations for many of her best dramatic poems and for her novel Wuthering Heights.

   Music activates many regions of the brain, including auditory, motor and limbic (associated with emotions). Such widespread activation of brain explains many beneficial emotional and cognitive music effects. The idea that music makes you smarter received considerable attention from scientists and the media. Listening to music or playing an instrument can actually make you learn better. And research confirms this by showing that music has the power to enhance some kinds of higher brain function: literacy skill, spatial-temporal reasoning, mathematical abilities (even children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder could benefit in mathematics tests from listening to music beforehand), emotional intelligence, and recall of autobiographical and episodic information.

   The power of music to affect memory is quite intriguing. Earlier it has been thought that listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, enhances performance on cognitive tests. However, there are findings that show that listening to any personally enjoyable music has positive effects on cognition. Listening to music also facilitates the recall of information. Researchers have shown that certain types of music are great keys for recalling memories. Information learned while listening to a particular song can often be recalled simply by “playing” the songs mentally. Musical training has even better effect than just listening to classical music. Activities, such as playing an instrument or singing, involve both sides of the brain at the same time. The information being studied activates the left brain while the music activates the right brain. The simultaneous left and right brain action causes the brain to be more capable of processing information, hence maximizing learning and retention of information. There is clear evidence that children who take music lessons develop a better memory compared with children who have no musical training.

   Moreover, music that is easy to listen to or relaxing classics improves the duration and intensity of concentration in all age groups and ability levels. It’s not clear what type of music is better, or what kind of musical structure produces the best results, but many studies have shown significant effects.

How do you lose weight in the first place?—Mostly, through breathing. While the concept of “burning” fat is not altogether wrong, losing fat involves plenty of carbon dioxide leaving your body. As the Washington Post explains:Researchers found that to burn a pound of fat, a human needs to inhale about three pounds of oxygen and drink about a pound of water. Water can exit the body in plenty of ways—poop, pee, sweat, saliva and any number of bodily fluids—but your lungs handle the brunt of the weight loss.

Your fat “goes” into the atmosphere. (And no, it doesn’t contribute to global warming.) When it does go, you’re also releasing the extra storage of vitamins and toxins along with it. That might not sound like a good thing, but in the long run it’s far better to be rid of them. As Popular Science states, a kind of pesticides, among other pollutants, are known to get bound up in fat—they leak into our food supply: Bodies don’t seem to store enough of these to become toxic, but the constant build-up leaves you vulnerable to exposure. And they do start to re-emerge when you lose weight.

By losing weight at a healthy pace (1-2 pounds a week), the limited number of pollutants released will not overload your bloodstream. Your urine will make quick work of them. Extreme dieting is a different story. The more weight you lose, the more of these toxins enter your bloodstream.

Since we no longer face the same problem as our ancestors—most of us don’t have to worry about whether or not we’ll eat tonight, or tomorrow—fat storage plays a different role in our bodies than previously. Many avoidable health problems are due to this excessive storage of energy, hormones and toxins. Some researchers claim 70 percent of our medical problems can be addressed through a healthier lifestyle, which includes eating better and moving more.