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The drum machine is the most culturally important new musical instrument since the electric guitar.

Electronic drums have been around for generations, and the early ones sounded like the cheesy rhythm attachments on home organs.

Westar Energy officials who are dealing with $200,000 in damage at a substation over the weekend say thieves also hit two other substations.

The utility discovered damage Monday at substations near Valley Center and in Wichita.  Westar Manager Doug VenJohn says thieves have hit 31 substations just in April. There were only 15 similar thefts in all of 2012.

Westar crews were at six different substations Monday to make repairs related to copper thefts. The company will replace the stolen copper with materials that have no scrap value.

State officials say travel and tourism in Kansas generated almost $8 billion in 2011. Becky Blake, the state director of tourism, says 32 million people visited Kansas in 2011 -- and each visitor spent about $236.

Mary Catherine Bateson is a well-known cultural anthropologist and writer. She serves on the boards for the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

For decades Bateson has worked in the field of anthropology. She is a Harvard and Radcliffe graduate and the daughter of social anthropologist Margaret Mead and cybernetics pioneer Gregory Bateson. She’s written on religion, family dynamics and aging but now is deeply involved in environmental issues. 

Kansas legislative committees are taking separate paths to solve differences over the state's 2014 budget.

The House Appropriations Committee met Monday to review spending adjustments required by bills that have been signed into law. They're also getting an update on state revenue estimates.

The Senate, whose budget committee met last Thursday, plans to have a separate catch-all spending bill on its calendar when it returns.

A new report shows bankruptcy filings in Kansas fell 11.5 percent for the 12-month period ending in March compared with the previous year.

The House Appropriations Committee is resuming some work on the 2014 budget Monday.

The House committee is scheduled to tackle small funding issues related to bills that are already signed into law.

All Legislators will return from their month-long break on May 8.

Still, several committees have met to prepare for the rest of the session. The Senate Ways and Means Committee met on Thursday, and the House Appropriations Committee is set to work on the budget Monday and Tuesday.

Many states have either outlawed or about to outlaw the use of cell phones while driving. But the real dangers of cell phone use while driving are not as obvious as they may seem.

The real danger lies in how the human mind functions.

Oftentimes individuals will explain that they use a “hands-free” headset or in car Bluetooth system. Many times people think that this resolves distraction issues because they believe that it’s the physical interaction with the device itself that causes the problem.

Kansas higher education officials are depending upon Gov. Brownback to convince lawmakers to preserve money for public universities and colleges.

Brownback toured university and community college campuses last week to highlight education's importance to the state economy.

The governor and other Republicans want Kansas to phase out individual income taxes over the next few years.

To replace that lost funding, Gov. Brownback wants to make a temporary sales tax that's set to expire in July permanent.

Kansas utility company officials say someone who caused a power outage and more than $150,000 in damage at a substation could possibly be seriously injured.

Westar crews went to check on a Wichita substation at 5:45 a.m. Saturday found grounding cables and copper wire missing and noticed the chain link fence was cut.

Westar says whoever broke into the substation was messing with dangerous materials and probably was severely injured when the transformer shorted out. They could possibly be blind, deaf and seriously burned.