Within the context of healthcare, there has been a long-standing interest in understanding the posture and movement of the human body. Gait analysis work over the years has looked to articulate the patterns and parameters of this movement both for a normal healthy body and in a range of movement-based disorders. In recent years, these efforts to understand the moving body have been transformed by significant advances in sensing technologies and computational analysis techniques all offering new ways for the moving body to be tracked, measured, and interpreted. While much of this work has been largely research focused, as the field matures, we are seeing more shifts into clinical practice. As a consequence, there is an increasing need to understand these sensing technologies over and above the specific capabilities to track, measure, and infer patterns of movement in themselves. Rather, there is an imperative to understand how the material form of these technologies enables them also tobe situated in everyday healthcare contexts and practices. There are significant mutually interdependent ties between the fundamental characteristics and assumptions of these technologies and the configurations of everyday collaborative practices that are possible them. Our attention then must look to social, clinical, and technical relations pertaining to these various body technologies that may play out in particular ways across a range of different healthcare contexts and stakeholders. Our aim in this book is to explore these issues with key examples illustrating how social contexts of use relate to the properties and assumptions bound up in particular choices of body-tracking technology. We do this through a focus on three core application areas in healthcare—assessment, rehabilitation, and surgical interaction—and recent efforts to apply body-tracking technologies to them.

Within the context of healthcare, there has been a long-standing interest in understanding the posture and movement of the human body. Gait analysis work over the years has looked to articulate the patterns and parameters of this movement both for a normal healthy body and in a range of movement-based disorders. In recent years, these efforts to understand the moving body have been transformed by significant advances in sensing technologies and computational analysis techniques all offering new ways for the moving body to be tracked, measured, and interpreted. While much of this work has been largely research focused, as the field matures, we are seeing more shifts into clinical practice. As a consequence, there is an increasing need to understand these sensing technologies over and above the specific capabilities to track, measure, and infer patterns of movement in themselves. Rather, there is an imperative to understand how the material form of these technologies enables them also tobe situated in everyday healthcare contexts and practices. There are significant mutually interdependent ties between the fundamental characteristics and assumptions of these technologies and the configurations of everyday collaborative practices that are possible them. Our attention then must look to social, clinical, and technical relations pertaining to these various body technologies that may play out in particular ways across a range of different healthcare contexts and stakeholders. Our aim in this book is to explore these issues with key examples illustrating how social contexts of use relate to the properties and assumptions bound up in particular choices of body-tracking technology. We do this through a focus on three core application areas in healthcare—assessment, rehabilitation, and surgical interaction—and recent efforts to apply body-tracking technologies to them.

The understanding of data semantics in Web-based information systems is the object of intensive research e?orts. The large volume of data on the Internet originatesaneedforaccessingthesemanticcontentofthatinformation. Furth- more, it requires the personalizing of its search and integration to various types of users. Two approacheshave been proposed in the research literature: integ- tion of Web technologies with database technologies and use of meta-languages such as XML. These solutions o?er highly structured or semi-structured data that allow users to perform queries at a higher semantic level. These also faci- tate thedynamic personalizationof Web-basedapplications. Therefore,it is now important to address the question of how one can e?ciently query and search large collections of XML documents. And it is also necessary to ?nd new so- tions, both to support dynamic architectures for Web-based applications and to model users' search and result presentation criteria. The third international workshop on Databases in Networked Information S- tems (DNIS 2003) was held on September 22-24, 2003 at the University of Aizu in Japan on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.The workshop program included research contributions, and invited contributions. The session on Web IntelligenceincludedinvitedpapersbyProfessorJimingLiuandProfessorCyrus Shahabi. The session on Information Interchange and Management Systems - cluded invited papers by Professor Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Professor Elisa Bertino, and ProfessorMarc Sifer. The session on Information Interchange Among Cyber CommunitieshadinvitedpapersbyProfessorToyoakiNishida,ProfessorMasaru Kitsuregawa,and Dr. Umeshwar Dayal. Finally the session onKnowledge - - notation and Visualization included theinvited contributionby ProfessorDaniel Keim.

Within the context of healthcare, there has been a long-standing interest in understanding the posture and movement of the human body. Gait analysis work over the years has looked to articulate the patterns and parameters of this movement both for a normal healthy body and in a range of movement-based disorders. In recent years, these efforts to understand the moving body have been transformed by significant advances in sensing technologies and computational analysis techniques all offering new ways for the moving body to be tracked, measured, and interpreted. While much of this work has been largely research focused, as the field matures, we are seeing more shifts into clinical practice. As a consequence, there is an increasing need to understand these sensing technologies over and above the specific capabilities to track, measure, and infer patterns of movement in themselves. Rather, there is an imperative to understand how the material form of these technologies enables them also tobe situated in everyday healthcare contexts and practices. There are significant mutually interdependent ties between the fundamental characteristics and assumptions of these technologies and the configurations of everyday collaborative practices that are possible them. Our attention then must look to social, clinical, and technical relations pertaining to these various body technologies that may play out in particular ways across a range of different healthcare contexts and stakeholders. Our aim in this book is to explore these issues with key examples illustrating how social contexts of use relate to the properties and assumptions bound up in particular choices of body-tracking technology. We do this through a focus on three core application areas in healthcare—assessment, rehabilitation, and surgical interaction—and recent efforts to apply body-tracking technologies to them.

Within the context of healthcare, there has been a long-standing interest in understanding the posture and movement of the human body. Gait analysis work over the years has looked to articulate the patterns and parameters of this movement both for a normal healthy body and in a range of movement-based disorders. In recent years, these efforts to understand the moving body have been transformed by significant advances in sensing technologies and computational analysis techniques all offering new ways for the moving body to be tracked, measured, and interpreted. While much of this work has been largely research focused, as the field matures, we are seeing more shifts into clinical practice. As a consequence, there is an increasing need to understand these sensing technologies over and above the specific capabilities to track, measure, and infer patterns of movement in themselves. Rather, there is an imperative to understand how the material form of these technologies enables them also tobe situated in everyday healthcare contexts and practices. There are significant mutually interdependent ties between the fundamental characteristics and assumptions of these technologies and the configurations of everyday collaborative practices that are possible them. Our attention then must look to social, clinical, and technical relations pertaining to these various body technologies that may play out in particular ways across a range of different healthcare contexts and stakeholders. Our aim in this book is to explore these issues with key examples illustrating how social contexts of use relate to the properties and assumptions bound up in particular choices of body-tracking technology. We do this through a focus on three core application areas in healthcare—assessment, rehabilitation, and surgical interaction—and recent efforts to apply body-tracking technologies to them.

The understanding of data semantics in Web-based information systems is the object of intensive research e?orts. The large volume of data on the Internet originatesaneedforaccessingthesemanticcontentofthatinformation. Furth- more, it requires the personalizing of its search and integration to various types of users. Two approacheshave been proposed in the research literature: integ- tion of Web technologies with database technologies and use of meta-languages such as XML. These solutions o?er highly structured or semi-structured data that allow users to perform queries at a higher semantic level. These also faci- tate thedynamic personalizationof Web-basedapplications. Therefore,it is now important to address the question of how one can e?ciently query and search large collections of XML documents. And it is also necessary to ?nd new so- tions, both to support dynamic architectures for Web-based applications and to model users' search and result presentation criteria. The third international workshop on Databases in Networked Information S- tems (DNIS 2003) was held on September 22-24, 2003 at the University of Aizu in Japan on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.The workshop program included research contributions, and invited contributions. The session on Web IntelligenceincludedinvitedpapersbyProfessorJimingLiuandProfessorCyrus Shahabi. The session on Information Interchange and Management Systems - cluded invited papers by Professor Tosiyasu L. Kunii, Professor Elisa Bertino, and ProfessorMarc Sifer. The session on Information Interchange Among Cyber CommunitieshadinvitedpapersbyProfessorToyoakiNishida,ProfessorMasaru Kitsuregawa,and Dr. Umeshwar Dayal. Finally the session onKnowledge - - notation and Visualization included theinvited contributionby ProfessorDaniel Keim.