Software design is becoming increasingly complex and difficult as we move to applications that support people interacting with information and with each other over networks. Computer supported cooperative work applications are a typical example of this. The problems to be solved are no longer just technical, they are also social: how do we build systems that meet the real needs of the people who are asked to use them and that fit into their contexts of use. We can characterise these as wicked problems, where our traditional software engineering techniques for understanding requirements and driving these through into design are no longer adequate.

This book presents the Locales Framework - and its five aspects of locale foundations, civic structures, individual views, interaction trajectory and mutuality - as a way of dealing with the intertwined problem-solution space of wicked problems. A locale is based on a metaphor of place as the lived relationship between people and the spaces and resources they use in their interactions. The Locales Framework provides a coherent mediating framework for ethnographers, designers, and software engineers to facilitate both understanding requirements of complex social situations and designing solutions to support these situations in all their complexity.

th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in Helsinki Finland. ECSCW is an international forum for multidisciplinary research covering the technical, empirical, and theoretical aspects of collaboration and computer systems. The 20 papers presented here have been selected via a rigorous reviewing process from 110 submissions. Both the number of submissions and the quality of the selected papers are testimony to the diversity and energy of the CSCW community. We trust that you will find the papers interesting and that they will serve to stimulate further quality work within the community. The technical papers are complemented by a wider set of activities at ECSCW 2003, including tutorials, workshops, demonstrations, videos, posters and a doctoral colloquium. Together these provide rich opportunities for discussion, learning and exploration of the more recent and novel issues in the field. This conference could not have taken place without considerable enthusiasm, support and participation, not to mention the hard work of a number of people. In particular, we would like to thank the following: * The authors, representing over 17 countries and 97 institutions, who submitted a paper. So many submissions of such high quality are the basis of a good conference. * The members of the program committee who so diligently reviewed and discussed papers. Their collective decisions result in a good scientific program and their feedback to authors strengthens the work of the community.

th This volume gathers together the technical papers presented at the 8 European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW), held in Helsinki Finland. ECSCW is an international forum for multidisciplinary research covering the technical, empirical, and theoretical aspects of collaboration and computer systems. The 20 papers presented here have been selected via a rigorous reviewing process from 110 submissions. Both the number of submissions and the quality of the selected papers are testimony to the diversity and energy of the CSCW community. We trust that you will find the papers interesting and that they will serve to stimulate further quality work within the community. The technical papers are complemented by a wider set of activities at ECSCW 2003, including tutorials, workshops, demonstrations, videos, posters and a doctoral colloquium. Together these provide rich opportunities for discussion, learning and exploration of the more recent and novel issues in the field. This conference could not have taken place without considerable enthusiasm, support and participation, not to mention the hard work of a number of people. In particular, we would like to thank the following: * The authors, representing over 17 countries and 97 institutions, who submitted a paper. So many submissions of such high quality are the basis of a good conference. * The members of the program committee who so diligently reviewed and discussed papers. Their collective decisions result in a good scientific program and their feedback to authors strengthens the work of the community.

So much technology works, not by good design or by being a good fit to purpose, but because people make it work because they have to for some reason. We humans are incredibly creative and resourceful when it comes to getting something done. There are numerous stories we could all tell of the ingenious work-arounds we've developed to make something do what we want it to; or the enormous amount of time we've spent trying to find out how to make some technology work as we want, e.g., trying to find out how to turn off auto-editing commands in a word processing package when all we want is for it to 'do what we tell it'. A good example of this principle was what motivated me to switch from neural networks to the area of Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) for my PhD research. I had undertaken a case study looking at the deployment of a multi-million dollar health information system throughout a hospital network.

This book presents current research in the study of neurologic disorders. Topics discussed include oxidative stress-mediated neurodegeneration; mechanisms of the motoneuron stress response and its relevance in neurodegeneration; genetics and molecular biology of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration; molecular imaging and Parkinson's disease; mitochondrion selective antioxidants as drug treatments for Alzheimer's disease; the role of vitamins in vascular dementia and biofluid protein biomarkers for the diagnosis of vascular dementia.