Have You got Rhythm? You Bet You Do!

Mid-summer’s night is here, the shortest night in the year. (That is a rhyme, not to be confused with a rhythm.) Although they have the same Latin and Greek root words they mean very different things. Rhythm is a “nonrandom variation” or “regulated pattern” according to the dictionary.

You may have heard about the cicadas coming out of their 17-year underground nap to pop into the sunlight for a brief dazzling sexual orgy. You also might have noticed that when you travel great distances for meetings or vacations you just aren’t “in sync” with the days and nights for a while. Both of these examples demonstrate how our built-in circadian rhythms affect us.

As it turns out we all have “clock cells” instructing our bodies that it is time to go to bed or get up and get busy. These same cells probably also trigger different behaviors as the seasons and amount of light change. And it isn’t only us! It seems that all animals from dogs to squirrels to birds to insects are subject to this internal clock.

Brandeis University researchers recently published an article in Cell that uses fruit flies to discover how we all adjust to long summer days versus long winter nights. Some of the research on circadian rhythms could explain the varying drives to reproduce (cicadas), migrate (birds, monarch butterflies), and hibernate (turtles, bears, etc.). There is also evidence that these same rhythms might be positively altered to alleviate conditions such as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and various depressions.

“Circadian Rhythms” is the term to use when you search the State Library’s Thomson-Gale databases. Go into the T-G general search box using http://www.kslc.org and you will find many wonderful articles covering various aspects of this phenomenon with titles such as Jet Lag and Internal Clock. If you want to see what Kids InfoBits has for younger researchers just use the same search term and find articles on biorhythms, and “Days of Our Lives”. Also from T-G is the Health and Wellness Resource Center that will yield several Harvard Special Health Reports along with over 1,400 articles from journals such as Diabetic Medicine and Journal of Biological Rhythms.

SIRS will show you encyclopedia articles and magazine articles from Teen Newsweek, Current Health, and Odyssey plus many others.

ProQuest actually uses the singular for its best search term. Type in “Circadian Rhythm” (no “s”) in the general search box and ask for Full Text Only (upper middle of main page). You will find over 800 fantastic articles from magazine titles such as Flying Safety, Science Letters, International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health, Genetics, and Pediatrics for Parents!

There are so many things that you can find when you use the databases offered through your State Library of Kansas! http://www.kslc.org

The Scoop on Crop Circles

It is June and all the state is covered with crops! Kansas is beautiful in June with many shades of green, gold, and tan that can be seen from hilltops and from the sky. Wheat is filling out, corn is on the rise and sorghum and beans are about to be planted. But, it is also the time of year when most crop circles seem to appear. Even if you haven’t seen one, you have probably heard of them.

Looking out of an airplane on your way over Kansas the usual circles you see are provided by our central-pivot irrigation systems. There are small ones, medium sized ones, and huge ones. They seem to cover the whole of western Kansas. But they are not the Only circles in our crops. Though crop circles seem to appear most often in certain areas of England, they have popped up in Kansas, Ohio, and other parts of the United States’ bread basket.

What ARE these strange and sometimes intricate designs? Could they really be messages from outer space? What, besides space aliens could create them? Some say that the sheer complexity of the patterns argues for exactly that. However, doubters are always ready to prove otherwise.

“Most tend to think of crop circles as having been created by bored, drunk folk trekking out to a field just after last orders with ropes and boards upsetting the local arable growers for a laugh and grinning like a Cheshire Cat the next morning as they drive by their night's work. This may be true in a few instances” comments Hugh Bloom last December in an article in Farmer Weekly (England).

Anyone with thoughts of imitating the aliens should think again. The destruction of crops by other than their owner could land someone in jail and cost them whatever the losses might be. In one incident not so long ago teens confessed to flattening a circle into a field. They apparently confessed to authorities even before they said hello! The newspaper article said that they would be charged and would compensate the farmer.

So, leave the crop circles and other designs to the aliens. That way we can all enjoy our summers AND our crops and you won’t anger anyone from outer space!

Learn more about this topic by using "crop circles" in any of the search boxes for the databases mentioned below.

• Here are the articles that were gleaned from the wonderful databases offered through the State Library ( http://www.kslc.org/ ) and used to form this article. The databases included Thomson-Gale, Sirs Discoverer, and ProQuest. There is something for Everybody at the State Library!

Anderson, Alun. "Britain's crop circles: reaping by whirlwind? Scientists are finally offering down-to-earth explanations for a phenomenon that had been the province of mystics." Science 253.n5023 (August 30, 1991): 961(2). Thomson Gale. State Library of Kansas.

Broom, Hugh. “Open mind on crop circles.” Farmers Weekly. Sutton. 145.22 (Dec 1, 2006): 40. ProQuest. State Library of Kansas.

Carol Biliczky. “ Four teens confess to crop circle: Geometric design in soybean field creates buzz south of Stark County; curious spectators visit.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News, Washington. (July 25, 2006): 1. ProQuest. State Library of Kansas.

Crop circles: do pranksters make them?" Know Your World Extra 39.3 (Oct 14, 2005): 8(2). Thomson Gale. State Library of Kansas.

Crop circles: Human hoax or megamystery? Read. March 5, 1999. 16(6). Sirs Discoverer. State Library of Kansas.

"Crop Circles In Kansas." Space Daily (August 26, 2005): NA. Thomson Gale. State Library of Kansas

Martin, Noelene. “Mystery of the Circles.” Touchdown. (Ryde, Australia) May 1997. 134(5). Sirs Discoverer. State Library of Kansas.

Nickell, Joe. “Crop circle mania wanes: an investigative update." Skeptical Inquirer 19.n3 (May-June 1995): 41(3). Thomson Gale. State Library of Kansas.