This book presents the latest insights and developments in the field of socio-cultural inspired algorithms. Akin to evolutionary and swarm-based optimization algorithms, socio-cultural algorithms belong to the category of metaheuristics (problem-independent computational methods) and are inspired by natural and social tendencies observed in humans by which they learn from one another through social interactions. This book is an interesting read for engineers, scientists, and students studying/working in the optimization, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence (AI) and computational intelligence fields.

This book explores the use of a socio-inspired optimization algorithm (the Cohort Intelligence algorithm), along with Cognitive Computing and a Multi-Random Start Local Search optimization algorithm. One of the most important types of media used for steganography is the JPEG image. Considering four important aspects of steganography techniques – picture quality, high data-hiding capacity, secret text security and computational time – the book provides extensive information on four novel image-based steganography approaches that employ JPEG compression. Academics, scientists and engineers engaged in research, development and application of steganography techniques, optimization and data analytics will find the book’s comprehensive coverage an invaluable resource.

This book presents the latest insights and developments in the field of socio-cultural inspired algorithms. Akin to evolutionary and swarm-based optimization algorithms, socio-cultural algorithms belong to the category of metaheuristics (problem-independent computational methods) and are inspired by natural and social tendencies observed in humans by which they learn from one another through social interactions. This book is an interesting read for engineers, scientists, and students studying/working in the optimization, evolutionary computation, artificial intelligence (AI) and computational intelligence fields.

This book discusses comprehensively the advanced manufacturing processes, including illustrative examples of the processes, mathematical modeling, and the need to optimize associated parameter problems. In addition, it describes in detail the cohort intelligence methodology and its variants along with illustrations, to help readers gain a better understanding of the framework. The theoretical and statistical rigor is validated by comparing the solutions with evolutionary algorithms, simulation annealing, response surface methodology, the firefly algorithm, and experimental work. Lastly, the book critically reviews several socio-inspired optimization methods.

The seven volumes LNCS 12249-12255 constitute the refereed proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2020, held in Cagliari, Italy, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was organized in an online event. Computational Science is the main pillar of most of the present research, industrial and commercial applications, and plays a unique role in exploiting ICT innovative technologies. The 466 full papers and 32 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 1450 submissions. Apart from the general track, ICCSA 2020 also include 52 workshops, in various areas of computational sciences, ranging from computational science technologies, to specific areas of computational sciences, such as software engineering, security, machine learning and artificial intelligence, blockchain technologies, and of applications in many fields.

This book gathers the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Frontiers of Intelligent Computing: Theory and Applications (FICTA 2020), held at NIT Surathkal, Karnataka, India, on 4–5 January 2020. In these proceedings, researchers, scientists, engineers and practitioners share new ideas and lessons learned in the field of intelligent computing theories with prospective applications in various engineering disciplines. The respective papers cover broad areas of the information and decision sciences, and explore both the theoretical and practical aspects of data-intensive computing, data mining, evolutionary computation, knowledge management and networks, sensor networks, signal processing, wireless networks, protocols and architectures. Given its scope, the book offers a valuable resource for graduate students in various engineering disciplines.

This edited book provides a platform to discuss the state-of-the-art developments associated with traditional and advanced single-/multi-objective criteria optimization methods for addressing problems of performance enhancement of the products and systems design. The book in detail discusses the core ideas, underlying principles, mathematical formulations, critical reviews and experimentations, and solutions to complex problems from within the domains such as mechanical engineering design and manufacturing, fault detection and diagnosis, control systems, financial systems, machine learning in medical image processing as well as problems from operations research domain. It will serve as a valuable reference to academicians and industry practitioners involved in improving the efficiency, cost, performance, and durability of the products and systems. The chapters in this book may further give impetus to explore new avenues leading towards multidisciplinary research discussions associated with the resilience and sustainability of the existing systems.

Trust has always been complicated. This book works to examine aspects and theories of trust. Chapters look at trust in the workplace. It considers types of leadership and how that influences the trust of employees. As workplaces and societies become more diverse, there can be an impact on trust. Many times, individuals will have implicit biases that can influence their perception of others and their ability to trust. Trust has also become more complicated with the advent of the internet. We can now connect with more ideas and individuals. Yet, is the person who communicates back with us real? Is it someone with a fake account or maybe not even a person at all, but a robot? Even though trust is complicated and we can sometimes be taken advantage of, we still need to find ways to trust others in our lives. Trust allows us to develop a community. We have always needed the community to be safe, both physically and emotionally. This book allows you to connect with new ideas and aspects of trust.

This volume constitutes selected papers presented during the 8th International Conference on Metaheuristics and Nature Inspired Computing, META 2021, held in Marrakech, Morocco, in October 201. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the conference was partiqally held online. The 16 papers were thoroughly reviewed and selected from the 53 submissions. They are organized in the topical sections on ​combinatorial optimization; continuous optimization; optimization and machine learning; applications.

Since agriculture is one of the key parameters in assessing the gross domestic product (GDP) of any country, it has become crucial to transition from traditional agricultural practices to smart agriculture. New agricultural technologies provide numerous opportunities to maximize crop yield by recognizing and analyzing diseases and other natural variables that may affect it. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how computer-assisted technologies can best be utilized and adopted in the conversion to smart agriculture. Modern Techniques for Agricultural Disease Management and Crop Yield Prediction is an essential publication that widens the spectrum of computational methods that can aid in agriculture disease management, weed detection, and crop yield prediction. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as soil and crop sensors, swarm robotics, and weed detection, this book is ideally designed for environmentalists, farmers, botanists, agricultural engineers, computer engineers, scientists, researchers, practitioners, and students seeking current research on technology and techniques for agricultural diseases and predictive trends.