The subjects of the world’s books: A further examination of Unesco’s book production statistics

The Unesco Statistical Yearbook includes in its annual volumes tables reporting the number of books published by countries in subject classes according to the UDC classification system. These statistics are examined to assess global trends in subjects areas such as pure, social, medical, and applied sciences, and literature. Data from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America are found to be highly inconclusive due to nonreporting patterns. Data from Europe and the USSR are more comprehensive. According to these data, social science titles form the largest percentages of the world's production, followed by applied sciences and literature. Overall, literature and medical science titles appear to be increasing in production faster than other subject areas. Gretchen Whitney is an assistant professor at the Graduate Library School of the University of Arizona and author ofLanguage Distribution in Databases. She teache in the fields of information science and information policy.     

Female odors evoke ultrasounds from male mice

Four experiments investigated the stimulus properties of female mice that influence ultrasound production by adult males. Female urine alone was less effective in evoking ultrasounds than was the female in male-female pairs. Visual cues were not necessary, since there was no difference in the incidence or latency of ultrasounds from male-female pairs when tested in light and dark conditions. A presently unspecified chemical cue produced by females, whose effectiveness is mediated by olfaction, was sufficient to evoke ultrasounds from male mice. The role of this chemical cue in a multimodal sequential communicative chain is discussed.