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• - 10 - The Red Tide is not the only example of this type of phenomenon; many other types of marine organisms will occasionally "bloom" to an enormous extent, affecting huge areas of the ocean. Factors controlling such phenomena are still shrouded in mystery. Conventional chemical analyses of the water, measurement of temperature, specific gravity, and other similar parameters have yielded little infor- mation as to what controls these biogeographic factors. 3. Geophysical Phenomena There is a large series of phenomena suggestive of a real or • presumptive reaction of living organisms with geophysical forces. A very simple example can be seen in a seed. Irrespective of the manner or position in which a seed is planted, it can in some way sense gravity; rootlets are always oriented downward and the sprout upward. How gravity affects "polarization" of rootlet cells is not known. Certain hormones affect plant grrAyth and there is a transport system which "carries" these hormones to different sites in the root, causing one area to grow more rapidly than another, thereby orienting the root downward. FIow gravity can interact with such a transport system is also completely mysterious. Similar cellular mechanisms may exist in other living systems. Another example can be seen in migratory birds. Certain South American birds fly close to the Arctic Circle in order to lay their eggs. After the young have hatched and have grown to maturity, the parents leave

• and fly back to South America. Tuo weeks later the young follow and complete a 6,000 mile overwater flight, making a landfall with an error of less than 10 miles. It is believed that such exquisite navigation is possible only if migratory birds can "lock" on to some geophysical parameter. This applies also to other animals. Salmon returning to the • 0 river of their birth to spawn, and the migration of eels over enormous areas of ocean, are other examples. 4. Periodicit.y and Biological Clocks There is no question that biological clocks have an enormous impact on all forms of life. Indeed, life couldn't exist without such clocks which control a huge range of factors from human heart to the dividing cell. Many of these clocks have an intrinsic or self-determined regulatory mechanism. Others may be linked to extrinsic forces in the geophysical realm. Sozne invest:igators are convinced that organisms as a whole have many biological clocks which are definitely linked to extrinsic geophysical factors. Other investigators doubt these correlations but are willing to keep an open mind until more definitive experimentation has been done. Much of the correlation of geophysical events and biology is generally accepted and, indeed, has become lore. As an example, obste- trical supervisors in hospitals are reported to reserve extra beds for maternity cases at every full moon. This is generally accepted, but very little rigorous analysis of this assertion has been carried out. If it were

• • - 12 - shown to be true that births do increase at the time of the full moon, it would be an extremely important bit of knowledge, one worthy of serious study in order to ascertain why it is so. Many other periodicities also exist, some of which though subject to critical analysis, remain totally unexplainable. For instance, in southern New England there is an annual peak of coronary thrombosis in April; in Texas the annual peak occurs in August. There are also many instances of what appear to be correlation of animal behaviors with lunar or solar days. An example can be seen in grunion; they seem to sense the full of the moon so as to lay their eggs at the edge of the highest possible tide. Other animals appear to sense the full dark of the moon for their mating period. Certain seashore animals have specific and classical response to tides; if these animals are taken in a hermetically-sealed container from the East Coast to the Midwest, they maintain East Coast tidal time in their physiological response. 5. Field Effects Until recently very little attention has been given to fields and their interaction with biological materials. Fields include gravi- tational (or centrifugal), magnetic, electric and electromagnetic. An intriguing series of observations in relation to fields and their interaction with biological materials began in 1958 at the New 0

- 13 - 0 • England Institute for Medical Research. The portion of the electromag- netic spectrum then scrutinized was in the megacycle range (normally refe:-red to as radio frequency or r. f.). It had been accepted through decades of experimentation that no interaction of electromagnetic fields in the megacycle range with biological materials occurred other than dielectric heating, conven- tionally and routinely used under the name of diathermy. Various factors induced investigators at the New England Insti- tute for N'edical Research to suspect that there might be other forces involved in these electromagnetic fields in the radio frequency range which were nonthermal. This has now been established. (Very briefly, it has been demonstrated that with the right wave length organisms can be constrained to move in specific directions and, indeed, that such electromagnetic fields can interact with the internal structure of the cell as well as its reproductive apparatus to cause most intriguing and dramatic effects. These effects include genetic changes which result in mutations, and it has been quite startling to determine that as a result of using constant physical factors, mutations can be "designed." Experimental work with biological, biochemical, and organic chemical materials indicates that these radio frequency fields exert a very fundamental action down to the level of the molecule. This work has been corroborated at various major universities and other research centers. Many important implications have already stemmed from this work. (As a practical matter, a major chain of Southwestern bakeries has used this specific type of information on fields to solve a major problem which had heretofore been insurmountable. Bread frequently contains a bacterium, B. sublis, which cannot be killed at the baking temperature of bread. Radio frequency fields of the right frequency and voltage com- pletely destroy this organism with no other effect on the bread. Other frequencies have been found to kill viruses in plants.) 0

More interesting to the fundamental investigator is the fact that invPstigators at the New England Institute for h1edical Research have fo"-&~ that at certain frequencies cell division has Btopped completely. The implications of such observations to the cancer problem are obvious. The wave lengths and the amount of energy necessary to produce cellular changes in the experiments just mentioned are present as normal geophysical phenomena on the earth's surface. Lightning can propagate energy for a considerable distance which correlates quite well with the kind of energy and wave lengths which the above-mentioned experiments show can exert a fundamental genetic effect on plants and animals. Thus, the entire geophysical field of atmospheric electricity becomes potentially very important because of its duplication of the recently discovered effects of radio frequency fields on living matter, as well as its possible relation- ship to the Fohn wind effect and the production of ions in the atmosphere. Further extension of work on nonthermal effects of radio frequency energy, which embodies both electric and magnetic fields, will include study of effects observed in each of the component fields separately. The study of fields and their effects on biological systems will form an important part in biogeophysical research.