-------------------------------------------------------------------------- */International Journal of Soft Computing/*** (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis, steganalysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis, authentication, human identification, signal classification, surveillance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance, transaction tracking, etc. In many practical applications, the evidences collected from a crime scene may be non-ideal due to poor quality or availability of partial information. It is imperative for new research approaches to fuse information from multiple evidences to make a forensic decision or reliably classify as genuine or imposter. In all these forensic applications, soft computing techniques such as neural networks, fuzzy logic, evolutionary computing, and rough set, play an important role in learning complex data structures and patterns, and classifying them to make intelligent decisions. Soft computing has been widely used in various applications, such as machine vision, pattern detection, data segmentation, data mining, adaptive control, biometrics, and information assurance. This special issue aims to highlight state-of-the-art research and novel solutions in information forensic applications using emerging soft computing techniques. *_Topics of interest_* High quality review and technical research papers are solicited for the special issue. The topics include but are not limited to the following: *Algorithms*: Bayesian learning, neural network, support vector machine, genetic algorithms, rough sets, case based reasoning, fuzzy logic, uncertainty principle, and other machine learning approaches. *Applications*: Handwriting analysis, digital document examination, image/video forgery detection, evidence source investigation, speaker authentication, intelligent surveillance, biometrics, digital device forensics, digital evidence retrieval, multi-mode human indexing, digital transaction tracking, cryptanalysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis and steganalysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganalysis, crime prevention and prediction, information fusion, friction ridge analysis, and other forensics applications. *_Submission_* Manuscripts must be prepared in accordance with the "Guide for Authors" page at the journal website, http://www.springer.com/engineering/journal/500. Further, the manuscript must be submitted in the form of PDF file to one of the guest editors. The submission must include the title, abstract of your paper, and the corresponding author's name and affiliation. All papers will be rigorously reviewed based on originality and high scientific quality. Manuscripts must be well organized, clearly written with sufficient support for assertions and conclusion. International Journal of Soft Computing is indexed by Computer Science Index, Current Contents, Ei Page One, Inspec, ISI Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports-Science, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), SCOPUS, Zentralblatt Math, etc. *_Important Dates_* *_ _* Submission deadline: December 20, 2008 First notification date: March 30, 2009 Revision due date: April 30, 2009 Second notification date: May 31, 2009 Camera-ready due: July 1, 2009 *_ _* *_Guest Editors _* *_ _* Dr. Shiguo Lian Human-Computer Interface (HCI) Lab France Telecom R&D (Orange Labs) Beijing, China E-mail: shiguo.lian@orange-ftgroup.com Prof. Gregory L. Heileman Electrical & Computer Engineering Department University of New Mexico, USA E-mail: heileman@ece.unm.edu Prof. Afzel Noore Lane Department of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering West Virginia University, USA E-mail: afzel.noore@mail.wvu.edu www.csee.wvu.edu/~noore