Metaheuristic algorithms are present in various applications for different domains. Recently, researchers have conducted studies on the effectiveness of these algorithms in providing optimal solutions to complicated problems. Advancements in Applied Metaheuristic Computing is a crucial reference source for the latest empirical research on methods and approaches that include metaheuristics for further system improvements, and it offers outcomes of employing optimization algorithms. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as manufacturing, genetic programming, and medical imaging, this publication is ideal for researchers, academicians, advanced-level students, and technology developers seeking current research on the use of optimization algorithms in several applications.

The use of machines has changed the workplaces of today. While machinery is still not able to perform certain jobs that require creative or non-routine functions, their continuous advancements have shifted the dynamic between organizations and manual laborers. Strategic Imperatives and Core Competencies in the Era of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence focuses on contemporary organizations and their use of new competencies. Featuring coverage on new skill identification and best practices for management, this book is essential for professionals, administrators, researchers, and students seeking current research on the latest developments in technological applications in the workplace.

In global environments, healthcare organizations are required to be flexible and resilient in coping with uncertain and complex circumstances. ""Redesigning Innovative Healthcare Operation and the Role of Knowledge Management"" collects a compilation of chapters on how knowledge impacts the layout and design of the medical industry. A cutting-edge reference source within the field, this book provides comprehensive frameworks, constraints, and performances analyzed by experts within the healthcare sector.

Drawing upon theories from visual studies, critical visual culture studies, and cognitive psychology, and with a special focus on gender and ethnicity, this book gives students a theoretical foundation for future work as visual communicators. The book takes a closer look at the interwoven character of perception and reception that is present in everyday visual encounters. Chapters present a wide variety of visual examples from art history, digital media, and the images we encounter and use in our daily lives. With the tools to understand how images and text make meaning, students are thus prepared to better communicate through visual media. This book serves as a main or supplementary text for visual communication or visual culture courses.

Over the last decade, the needs of educational organizations have been changing in accordance with increasingly complex pedagogical models and with the technological evolution of e-learning environments with very dynamic teaching and learning requirements. ""Architectures for Distributed and Complex M-Learning Systems: Applying Intelligent Technologies"" explores state-of-the-art software architectures and platforms used to support distributed and mobile e-learning systems. Containing research from leading international experts, this advanced publication provides useful references to support learning practices for academicians, researchers, and practitioners.

Das Unternehmen des Informationszeitalters muss vom Kundenprozess ausgehen, die Starken verschiedener Online- und Offline-Absatzkanale kombinieren und Echzeit-Prozesse mit seinen Supply-Chain-Partnern organisieren. Um zum Netzwerk- oder Echtzeit-Unternehmen zu werden, ist ein Vorgehen in kleinen, wohluberlegten Schritten erfolgversprechender als "der grosse Wurf." Jeder Schritt benotigt eine Geschaftslosung, einen Kooperationsprozess zwischen Unternehmen und eine offene Infrastruktur. Dazu hat die Universitat St. Gallen gemeinsam mit neun namhaften Unternehmen eine Architektur erarbeitet, die eine Ausgestaltung der Schritte auf den Ebenen Strategie, Prozess und System unterstutzt. Anhand dieser Architektur werden verschiedene marktgangige Produkte und Technologien eingeordnet. Eine aus der Praxis abgeleitete Projektmethode fasst abschliessend die Erfahrungen zusammen und schlagt ein allgemeines Vorgehen vo

The second generation of cloud computing systems, known as domain-specific clouds, are emerging based on application-specific processors and serverless computing paradigm. As multimedia streaming services are increasingly growing in popularity and diversity, this book is authored to introduce "multimedia clouds" as a domain-specific cloud that operates in the intersection of cloud computing technologies and digital media streaming. The book concentrates on the architectural aspects of multimedia clouds and describes development of high-level abstractions that will mitigate the burden of programmers, cloud architects, and system administrators. Multimedia clouds not only democratize multimedia streaming and add flexibility to the streaming services, they also help stream providers to offer robust and reliable streaming services in a cost- and energy-efficient manner.

This handbook is organized under three major parts. The first part of this handbook deals with multimedia security for emerging applications. The chapters include basic concepts of multimedia tools and applications, biological and behavioral biometrics, effective multimedia encryption and secure watermarking techniques for emerging applications, an adaptive face identification approach for android mobile devices, and multimedia using chaotic and perceptual hashing function. The second part of this handbook focuses on multimedia processing for various potential applications. The chapter includes a detail survey of image processing based automated glaucoma detection techniques and role of de-noising, recent study of dictionary learning based image reconstruction techniques for analyzing the big medical data, brief introduction of quantum image processing and it applications, a segmentation-less efficient Alzheimer detection approach, object recognition, image enhancements and de-noising techniques for emerging applications, improved performance of image compression approach, and automated detection of eye related diseases using digital image processing. The third part of this handbook introduces multimedia applications. The chapter includes the extensive survey on the role of multimedia in medicine and multimedia forensics classification, a finger based authentication system for e-health security, analysis of recently developed deep learning techniques for emotion and activity recognition. Further, the book introduce a case study on change of ECG according to time for user identification, role of multimedia in big data, cloud computing, the Internet of things (IoT) and blockchain environment in detail for real life applications. This handbook targets researchers, policy makers, programmers and industry professionals in creating new knowledge for developing efficient techniques/framework for multimedia applications. Advanced level students studying computer science, specifically security and multimedia will find this book useful as a reference.

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals' and organizations' behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today's society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society's goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship.

It is important for those in charge of implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to identify and understand the issues they face. ""Implementation Strategies for SAP R/3 in a Multinational Organization: Lessons from a Real-World Case Study"" provides readers with an instructive insight in the very complex process of ERP implementation in a global company. This book describes the issues, problems, and challenges of ERP execution as well as the strategies companies use to react to and resolve them successfully. The reader can focus on different types of issues - organizational as well as technical. It is a goldmine for instructors who can use the cases in different course settings and with different student audiences. Researchers and practioners will also find value in the detailed descriptions of challenges faced by companies such as Robert Bosch GmbH.

In recent years, the field of multimedia communication in wireless and mobile video has grown in attraction. As the number of networks, types of devices, and content representation formats increase, the need for multimedia transcoding in wireless and mobile networks intensifies in order to provide a seamless interaction between content creation and usage.""Multimedia Transcoding in Mobile and Wireless Networks"" addresses the transcoding of all multimedia elements, including video, audio and text, while addressing both practical and theoretical problems in the field. A must have resource for all stakeholders in mobile and wireless technologies, this book embodies state-of-the-art knowledge of transcoding as it is embedded in today's pioneering technologies and leading research.

This book objectively represents the status quo and trends of world Internet development in 2021, systematically summarizes Internet development in major countries and regions, and deeply analyzes new development condition and trends in key fields of Internet, in terms of eight aspects, i.e., information infrastructure, information technology, digital economy, e-government, cyber media, cybersecurity, cyberlaws, and international cyberspace governance. This book maintains the index system of world Internet development, optimizes some indexes, and comprehensively evaluates Internet development in major countries and regions in the world, in order to better demonstrate the strength and characteristics of Internet development in various countries and mirror the overall trend in world Internet development in a comprehensive, accurate, and objective way. This book collects the latest research results in world Internet development. With diverse subjects and detailed discussion, this book possesses great significance for these engaged in Internet field in governmental departments, Internet enterprises, scientific research institutions, and universities, who hope to fully understand world Internet development.

This text is intended for a broad audience as both an introduction to predictive models as well as a guide to applying them. Non- mathematical readers will appreciate the intuitive explanations of the techniques while an emphasis on problem-solving with real data across a wide variety of applications will aid practitioners who wish to extend their expertise. Readers should have knowledge of basic statistical ideas, such as correlation and linear regression analysis. While the text is biased against complex equations, a mathematical background is needed for advanced topics. Dr. Kuhn is a Director of Non-Clinical Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D in Groton Connecticut. He has been applying predictive models in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic industries for over 15 years and is the author of a number of R packages. Dr. Johnson has more than a decade of statistical consulting and predictive modeling experience in pharmaceutical research and development. He is a co-founder of Arbor Analytics, a firm specializing in predictive modeling and is a former Director of Statistics at Pfizer Global R&D. His scholarly work centers on the application and development of statistical methodology and learning algorithms. Applied Predictive Modeling covers the overall predictive modeling process, beginning with the crucial steps of data preprocessing, data splitting and foundations of model tuning. The text then provides intuitive explanations of numerous common and modern regression and classification techniques, always with an emphasis on illustrating and solving real data problems. Addressing practical concerns extends beyond model fitting to topics such as handling class imbalance, selecting predictors, and pinpointing causes of poor model performance-all of which are problems that occur frequently in practice. The text illustrates all parts of the modeling process through many hands-on, real-life examples. And every chapter contains extensive R code f

This book discusses important recent advances in automated negotiations. It introduces a number of state-of-the-art autonomous agents for large-scale and complex negotiations, and demonstrates that automated negotiation is one of the most important areas in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Further, it presents automated negotiation scenarios involving negotiation encounters that may have, for instance, a large number of agents or a large number of issues with interdependencies and/or real-time constraints. This book includes carefully selected and reviewed outcomes of the 11th International Workshop on Automated Negotiations (ACAN) held in Stockholm, Sweden, 2018, in conjunction with IJCAI-ECAI-2018. Written by leading academic and industrial researchers, it is a valuable resource for professionals and scholars working on complex automated negotiations. Furthermore, the in-depth descriptions of automated negotiating agent programs help readers who are involved in writing codes for automated agents.

Efficiency and Efficacy are crucial to the success of national and international business operations today. With this in mind, businesses are continuously searching for the information and communication technologies that will improve job productivity and performance and enhance communications, collaboration, cooperation, and connection between employees, employers, and stakeholders. The Evolution of the Internet in the Business Sector: Web 1.0 to Web 3.0 takes a historical look at the policy, implementation, management, and governance of productivity enhancing technologies. This work shares best practices with public and private universities, IS developers and researchers, education managers, and business and web professionals interested in implementing the latest technologies to improve organizational productivity and communication.

This book highlights the emerging field of intelligent computing and developing smart systems. It includes chapters discussing the outcome of challenging research related to distributed computing, smart machines and their security related research, and also covers next-generation communication techniques and the networking technologies that have the potential to build the future communication infrastructure. Bringing together computing, communications and other aspects of intelligent and smart computing, it contributes to developing a roadmap for future research on intelligent systems.

Virtual learning environments offer a novel environment through which teachers can engage students in active learning. Whether through virtual worlds such as Second Life or a custom-designed personal learning environment, together students and teachers can explore new boundaries in education. Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Virtual Learning Environments highlights invaluable research covering the design, development, and evaluation of online learning environments. An essential resource for academics, professionals, corporate trainers and policy makers, this book examines the role of technology enhanced learning in this emerging area.

This contributed book focuses on major aspects of statistical quality control, shares insights into important new developments in the field, and adapts established statistical quality control methods for use in e.g. big data, network analysis and medical applications. The content is divided into two parts, the first of which mainly addresses statistical process control, also known as statistical process monitoring. In turn, the second part explores selected topics in statistical quality control, including measurement uncertainty analysis and data quality. The peer-reviewed contributions gathered here were originally presented at the 13th International Workshop on Intelligent Statistical Quality Control, ISQC 2019, held in Hong Kong on August 12-14, 2019. Taken together, they bridge the gap between theory and practice, making the book of interest to both practitioners and researchers in the field of statistical quality control.

This book presents selected papers from the Sixteenth International Conference on Intelligent Information Hiding and Multimedia Signal Processing, in conjunction with the Thirteenth International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology, Applications and Tools, held on November 5-7, 2020, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It is divided into two volumes and discusses the latest research outcomes in the field of Information Technology (IT) including information hiding, multimedia signal processing, big data, data mining, bioinformatics, database, industrial and Internet of things, and their applications.

As the disciplines of art, technology, and information science collide, computer graphics and multimedia are presenting a myriad of applications and problems to professionals and scholars in Computer Science, Information Science, Digital Art, Multimedia, Educational Technology, and Media Arts. Today's digital scholar can use Computer Graphics and Multimedia: Applications, Problems and Solutions as a tool to explore the vast parameters of the applications, problems, and solutions related to digital disciplines. Contributing authors include computer scientists, multimedia researchers, computer artists, graphic designers, and digital media specialists. The book has an extensive range of topics for the digital scholar who wants to discover and research other areas within the computer graphics and multimedia disciplines beyond their own.

Research indicates that active management of intellectual capital can lead to significant payoffs for organizations. However, when considered within a multinational context, there are specific issues that may cause concern. ""Strategic Intellectual Capital Management in Multinational Organizations: Sustainability and Successful Implications"" highlights areas of concern in developing strategies for international management of intellectual capital and demonstrates opportunities for the successful use of these tactics. A defining collection of field advancements, this innovative publication provides a valuable resource to academicians, researchers, and practitioners interested in this area of study.