In gratitude, the audience broke into the rhythmic applause that indicates they were pleased with their entertainment.

Davidson recalls, "One by one, kids began standing up in their seats, screaming and raising their hands in rhythmic applause.

But they cheered even louder, in waves of rhythmic applause, as the leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Soviet Lithuania was introduced.

But in some cultures, particularly in Eastern Europe, it is common for an audience's clapping to become synchronized into waves of rhythmic applause.

Unlike clocks or fireflies, rhythmic applause appears to have a basis in culture as well as physics, Dr. Barabasi said.

Even in an Eastern European audience, however, the rhythmic applause usually lasts only 10 or 15 seconds.

There was long rhythmic applause here when Msgr.

All that was missing was the free distribution of rally caps and a heartfelt request for rhythmic applause.

The congregation at the church here, 12 miles south of Havana, burst into rhythmic applause and answered the priest with a more secular chant.

Some rhythmic applause.