Guest editorial

This Special Issue of LAAR collects a selection of papers originally presented in the XII Workshop on Control and Information Processing (RPIC). These meetings take place biannually since 1985 in different cities all over the country allowing the exchange of research ideas between Argentine specialists in the beginning but with increasing participation of international researches in later editions.

The XII RPIC took place on October 16-18, 2007 at the Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia Austral (UNPA), Argentina, and was organized by the Unidad Académica Río Gallegos. The total number of attendants to the meeting was 256, with 31 undergraduate students and 15 foreign visitors. One hundred and ten travel grants were given to help assistants since UNPA is far away from the most important research centers in Argentina.

A total of 222 papers were submitted (210 regular papers and 12 student papers), and after the review process by peers, 196 papers were accepted (184 regular and 12 student papers). Finally, 149 papers were presented by their authors in 45 oral sessions divided into 19 different topics during the three days.

The event included three plenary lectures: "Coordinated Control of Complex Networks" by Prof. Guanrong Chen, from Centre for Chaos and Complex Networks, City University of Hong Kong; "Ultra Wideband Telecommunication Systems" by Dr. Mario Edgardo Magaña from Oregon State University and "Topologies and Control Strategies for double-fed Machines in Wind-Power Applications" by Dr. Ruben Peña Guiñez from Magallanes University, Chile.

The XII RPIC Organizing Committee wants to thank the following institutions for their financial support: FONCyT-ANPCyT; Santa Cruz Province Government; Centre for Chaos and Complex Networks, City University of Hong Kong; AADECA; Fulbright Commission and UNPA. We also extend our gratitude to all the referees for the careful and expertise assistance in the revision procedure, and Universidad Nacional del Sur for its unconditional support.

From the papers presented in the XII RPIC that were also voluntarily submitted by their authors to be considered for publication in this Special Issue, a group of 23 passed the RPIC selection and were subject to the standard review process of the journal. The 13 papers that have been recommended for publication in this Special Issue of LAAR, reveal the high-quality and wide scope of the RPIC meetings.

Diego Alonso, José L. Figueroa, Mirta Padín, Eduardo Paolini and Jorge A. Solsona