This volume records the papers presented in Warsaw on the meeting of the International Society of Arterial Chemoreception (LS. A. C. ) organized as a Satellite Symposium of the XXXI International Congress of the Union of Physiological Sciences (I. U. P. S. ) in Helsinki in July 1989. It is a 30 years old tradition to hold periodically international meetings on recent developments in chemoreceptor research and to exchange information between those of us interested in chemoreception. The first meeting was organized by B. B. Lloyd in Oxford in 1959. Later on, similar international meetings were...

Since oxygen is mainly transported by diffusion within tissue, the oxygen pressure field reflects the local balance between oxygen supply and oxygen consumption and characterizes the state of oxygen supply. Despite large physiological varia- tions (e. g. , hypo-and hyperoxia, hypo-and hypertension, change of energy de- mand), this oxygen pressure field can remain remarkably constant, demonstrating that very effective mechanisms must exist that guarantee the adequacy of oxygen supply. Today, it is possible to describe in detail the responsible effector mecha- nisms that produce such a stable...