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The sialic acids are widely distributed in nature, either free or as components of homo- and heterosaccharides, glycoproteins, and glycolipids (Tuppy and Gottschalk, 1972). Although a considerable literature has accumulated on sialic acids and the sialo compounds, a unified concept about the biological roles of sialic acids has not yet developed due to both their heterogeneous occurrence and their possible involvement in diverse cellular functions (Faillard and Schauer, 1972; Gottschalk, 1972; Marshall, 1972; Mehrishi, 1972; Curtis, 1973; Hughes, 1973; Schauer, 1973; Weiss, 1973). This chapter will approach a better understanding of the biological roles of sialic acids by examining their occurrence in nature. A possible correlation between the evolution and biological roles of sialic acids is considered.

Renal arterial infusion of acetylcholine (ACh) in control dogs produced a natriuresis and diuresis and an increase in renal plasma flow (RPF) without a change in glomerular filtration rate (GFR) or in renin secretory rate (RSR). In dogs pretreated with indomethacin (Indo), an inhibitor of prostaglandin synthetase, renal arterial infusion of ACh first produced a rise, then a decline in urine flow, sodium excretion (UNaV) and GFR that was accompanied by a progressive fall in RPF and a progressive rise in RSR. The rise in RSR was potentiated by renal arterial infusion of an alpha-adrenergic receptor blocker, phenoxybenzamine (Phenoxy), and attenuated, but not completely abolished, by beta-adrenergic receptor blockade with propranolol (Prop). Chemical denervation with reserpine alone, or in combination with chronic surgical renal denervation, failed to prevent the fall in RPF, GFR and UNaV and the rise in RSR produced by ACh in Indo-treated dogs. Renal arterial infusion of Phenoxy and intravenous infusion of Prop, alone or in combination with renal arterial infusion of an angiotensin II antagonist, saralasin, failed to maintain the vasodilatory, diuretic and natriuretic effects of ACh in Indo-treated dogs. Elimination of endogenous vasopressin by hypophysectomy also failed to prevent the vasoconstriction induced by ACh in Indo-treated dogs. The results suggest that ACh produced renal vasoconstriction in Indo-treated dogs by mechanism(s) other than an increase in renal adrenergetic activity or an increase in the activity of the renin-angiotensin system. The results also suggest that the vasoconstriction was independent of vasopresin.

Spatial data are particularly useful in mobile environments. However, due to the low bandwidth of most wireless networks, developing large spatial database applications becomes a challenging process. In this paper, we provide the first attempt to combine two important techniques, multiresolution spatial data structure and semantic caching, towards efficient spatial query processing in mobile environments. Based on the study of the characteristics of multiresolution spatial data (MSD) and multiresolution spatial query, we propose a new semantic caching model called Multiresolution Semantic Caching (MSC) for caching MSD in mobile environments. MSC enriches the traditional three-category query processing in semantic cache to five categories, thus improving the performance in three ways: 1) a reduction in the amount and complexity of the remainder queries; 2) the redundant transmission of spatial data already residing in a cache is avoided; 3) a provision for satisfactory answers before 100% query results have been transmitted to the client side. Our extensive experiments on a very large and complex real spatial database show that MSC outperforms the traditional semantic caching models significantly.

Client-side caching of spatial data is an important yet very much under investigated issue. Effective caching of vector spatial data has the potential to greatly improve the performance of spatial applications in the Web and wireless environments. In this paper, we study the problem of semantic spatial caching, focusing on effective organization of spatial data and spatial query trimming to take advantage of cached data. Semantic caching for spatial data is a much more complex problem than semantic caching for aspatial data. Several novel ideas are proposed in this paper for spatial applications. A number of typical spatial application scenarios are used to generate spatial query sequences. An extensive experimental performance study is conducted based on these scenarios using real spatial data. We demonstrate a significant performance improvement using our ideas.