Guest Editorial: Advances in Information Technology

The topic of recent advances in information technology has attracted a wide range of articles on technology theory, applications from many aspects, and design methods of information technology. Reviewing the papers in this topic, it is clear that all fields such as computer science, cloud computing, wireless sensor network, prediction, image annotation, and storage have been involved. And the publications about recent advances in information technology tackled significant recent developments in the fields mentioned above, both of a foundational and applicable character.

Also, we can easily find that most contributors regard “information technology” as synonymous with tools such as the computer, mobile, and tablet and such issues as instructional design, mobile learning, social networking, and open sources. Through the topic’s development, research designs are appropriate for studying the potential of information technology applications under controlled situations.

In this section, ten papers have been selected for publication. All selected papers followed the same standard (peer-reviewed by at least three independent reviewers) as applied to regular submissions. They have been selected based on their quality and their relation to the scope of the special section.

In the paper entitled “VANET Middleware for Service Sharing based on OSGi” Juan Luo et al. propose a distributed service directory selection algorithm SSWA (Stability and Sharing-oriented Weight-based Algorithm) and introduces a service discovery mechanism to make service discoveries for vehicles more effectively and timely.

In the paper entitled “A Meta-Modeling Framework for a Specific Social Domain：Public Opinion Event” Zongchen Fan et al. propose a domain-expert oriented methodology to guide the modeling process in a specific social domain, and design a meta-modeling framework based on the paradigm of Agent-Event-Environment (AEE) which can be considered as a basis of developing a visual modeling environment or tools.

The paper entitled “Dynamic Load Balancing Technology for Cloud-oriented CDN” Hui He et al. extracted the most important influencing factor of CDN loading from common network services and proposed the Variable Factor Weighted Least Connection. The proposed algorithm made real-time computing and dynamic regulation in considering of effect of network applications on server load index, performance changes of the server and workload changes.

In the paper entitled “Human-level Moving Object Recognition from Traffic Video” Fei Zhu et al. propose a Q-learning based object recognition approach which is able to deal with the hazy scenes of traffic video as well as crowd scenes of traffic video.

In the paper entitled “Multimedia Congestion Control in Wireless Sensor Networks” Kyoungsoo Bok et al. propose a new congestion control scheme to minimize data loss and maintain data quality in wireless multimedia sensor networks. The proposed scheme extracts and transfers dynamic regions by considering monitoring characteristics over multimedia sensor network environments to reduce the transferred data.

The paper entitled “TDCM: An IP Watermarking Algorithm based on Two Dimensional Chaotic Mapping” Wei Liang et al. is focused on the intellectual protection problem of the very large integration circuit and a novel algorithm which is suitable for the IP protection of integration circuit has been proposed.

The paper entitled “Detecting Overlapping Community in Complex Networks Based on Node Similarity” Zuo Chen et al. presents an algorithm for mining the overlapping community based on node similarity. Algorithm OCNS's idea is simple and detects the overlapping nodes in the network after finite iteration. The experiment results proves the algorithm is not only effective and feasible but also more accurately reflect the real situation of the network.

The paper entitled “On the Security Enhancement of Integrated Electronic Patient Records Information Systems” Muhammad Khurram Khan et al. present an improved authentication scheme using smart card for integrated Electronic patient records (EPR) information system. The correctness of proposed protocol is proved using BAN logic.

The paper entitled “A Image Segmentation Algorithm Based on Differential Evolution Particle Swarm Optimization Fuzzy C-Means Clustering” Jiansheng Liu et al. presents a hybrid differential evolution, particle swarm optimization and fuzzy c-means clustering algorithm called DEPSO-FCM for image segmentation.

The paper entitled “A Connectivity Monitoring Model of Opportunistic Sensor Network based on Evolving Graph” Jian Shu et al. propose a connectivity monitoring model based on evolving graph, by which we can obtain the network connectivity degree of a running OSN synchronously, thereby monitoring the connectivity of the OSN.

In particular, we would like to acknowledge the program committee members of Seventh International Symposium on Information Processing (ISIP 2014). This issue contains most of the revised and expanded versions of the selected quality papers presented at the Seventh International Symposium on Information Processing (ISIP 2014). We wish to express our deepest thanks to the program committee members for their help in selecting papers for this issue and especially the referees of the extended versions of the selected papers for their thorough reviews under a tight time schedule. ISIP 2014 took place on October 25-26, 2014, in Changsha, China, and was cosponsored by Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, China; Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, Russia; South China University of Technology, China; Feng Chia University, Taiwan; Henan Polytechnic University, China; Nanchang Hangkong University, China; and Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, China. In closing, we would like to take this opportunity to thank the authors for the efforts they put in the preparation of the manuscripts and in keeping the deadlines set by editorial requirements. We hope that you will enjoy reading this special issue as much as we did putting it together.

We would also like to thank Prof. Mirjana Ivanović, the editor-in chief of ComSIS, for her support during the preparation of this special section in the journal.

Editor of the special issue
Fei Yu
Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, Moscow, Russia

Editor of the special issue
Chin-Chen Chang
Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan

Editor of the special issue
Degang Sun
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Editor of the special issue
Iftikhar Ahmad
King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Editor of the special issue
Jun Zhang
Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

Editor of the special issue
Jose Maria de Fuentes
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain