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Meta-Luxury: Brands and the Culture of Excellence

Meta-Luxury sets out to define the ultimate meaning of true luxury, exploring it as both a culture and business model. Through the concept of Unique Achievement and the drivers of Craftsmanship, Focus, History and Rarity, the authors examine what is at the heart of true luxury through a unique series of conversations.

Meta-regulation in Practice: Beyond Normative Views of Morality and Rationality ((Routledge Advances in Sociology Ser.) (PDF))

Meta-regulation presents itself as a progressive policy approach that can manage complexity and conflicting objectives better than traditional command and control regulation. It does this by ‘harnessing’ markets and enlisting a broad range of stakeholders to reach a more inclusive view of the public interest that a self-regulating business can then respond to. Based on a seventeen year study of the Australian energy industry, and via the lens of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, Meta-Regulation in Practice argues that normative meta-regulatory theory relies on questionable assumptions of stakeholder morality and rationality. Meta-regulation in practice appears to be most challenged in a complex and contested environment; the very environment it is supposed to serve best. Contending that scholarship must prioritise an understanding of communicative possibilities in practice, this book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in subjects such as business regulation, systems theory and corporate social responsibility. Please visit meta-regulation.com for more insightful information on meta-regulation and Meta-Regulation in Practice.

Meta-Science of Tawhid: A Theory of Oneness

This book explores the methodological foundation of Islamic thought premised on the cardinal principle of Tawhid, meaning the Oneness of God as the universal law. The consequential methodological worldview arising from the monotheistic unity of knowledge is explained as the theory of consilience, meaning unity of knowledge as the primal ontological reality leading to its epistemological and phenomenological essentials of reasoning and thereby configuring reality. Masudul Alam Choudhury presents a non-mathematical exposition of the theory and applications of Meta-Science of Tawhid, and brings out the essential monotheistic methodological worldview of science.

Metabase Up and Running: Introduce business intelligence and analytics to your company and make better business decisions

Ask questions of your data and gain insights to make better business decisions using the open source business intelligence tool, Metabase Key Features Deploy Metabase applications to let users across your organization interact with it Learn to create data visualizations, charts, reports, and dashboards with the help of a variety of examples Understand how to embed Metabase into your website and send out reports automatically using email and Slack Book Description Metabase is an open source business intelligence tool that helps you use data to answer questions about your business. This book will give you a detailed introduction to using Metabase in your organization to get the most value from your data. You'll start by installing and setting up Metabase on your local computer. You'll then progress to handling the administration aspect of Metabase by learning how to configure and deploy Metabase, manage accounts, and execute administrative tasks such as adding users and creating permissions and metadata. Complete with examples and detailed instructions, this book shows you how to create different visualizations, charts, and dashboards to gain insights from your data. As you advance, you'll learn how to share the results with peers in your organization and cover production-related aspects such as embedding Metabase and auditing performance. Throughout the book, you'll explore the entire data analytics process—from connecting your data sources, visualizing data, and creating dashboards through to daily reporting. By the end of this book, you'll be ready to implement Metabase as an integral tool in your organization. What you will learn Explore different types of databases and find out how to connect them to Metabase Deploy and host Metabase securely using Amazon Web Services Use Metabase's user interface to filter and aggregate data on single and multiple tables Become a Metabase admin by learning how to add users and create permissions Answer critical questions for your organization by using the Notebook editor and writing SQL queries Use the search functionality to search through tables, dashboards, and metrics Who this book is for This book is for business analysts, data analysts, data scientists, and other professionals who want to become well-versed with business intelligence and analytics using Metabase. This book will also appeal to anyone who wants to understand their data to extract meaningful insights with the help of practical examples. A basic understanding of data handling and processing is necessary to get started with this book.

Metabolical: The truth about processed food and how it poisons people and the planet

Did you know that 62% of the food in our supermarkets is not only processed but 'ultra-processed' (ingredients from other foods are combined to make something 'new', often in colours that do not exist in nature) and that data shows that by eating this kind of food over time we are literally slowly poisoning ourselves?In the hard-hitting, ground-breaking tradition of his NY Times bestseller FAT CHANCE, which revealed the dangers of sugar, Dr Robert Lustig persuasively presents a stark exposé of how our addiction to processed foods (aided and abetted by the food industry, big ag, big pharma, institutional medicine and the government) is behind the lethal increase in major non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver disease, cancer and dementia. We have come to accept that these chronic diseases are simply part of the 'natural ageing process', but Dr Lustig makes the case that this is simply not true. The solution on both a personal and societal level is a return to unprocessed food and Dr Lustig offers a doable plan for us to heal and restore our own health and wellbeing with real food, and in the process boosting our immunity to viruses like Covid-19.

Metacontrolling im partizipativen Entwicklungscontrolling: Ansätze zur formalsprachlichen Spezifikation und simulationsgestützten Modellierung (neue betriebswirtschaftliche forschung (nbf) #392)

Der effektiven Gestaltung von Controllingsystemen, die Gegenstand des Metacontrollings ist, kommt eine große Bedeutung zu. Für die Anwendung des Metacontrollings im partizipativen Entwicklungscontrolling konstruiert Markus Pütz mehrere Ansätze zur formalsprachlichen Spezifikation und simulationsgestützten Modellierung. Diese Ansätze ermöglichen es einerseits, die Erfüllung der Anwendungsvoraussetzungen der in Controllingsystemen vorgesehenen Methoden zu verifizieren und anderseits die betreffenden Methoden vorab dahingehend auf Validität zu prüfen, ob die mit ihrem Einsatz angestrebten Controllingziele erfüllt werden können.

Metadata and Semantics

This is an edited volume based on the 2007 Conference on Metadata and Semantics Research (MTSR), now in its second meeting. Metadata research is a pluri-disciplinary field that encompasses all aspects of the definition, creation, assessment, management and use of metadata. The volume brings together world class leaders to contribute their research and up-to-date information on metadata and semantics applied to library management, e-commerce, e-business, information science and librarianship, to name a few. The book is designed for a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry.

Metadata Management in Statistical Information Processing: A Unified Framework for Metadata-Based Processing of Statistical Data Aggregates

As the integration of statistical data collected in various subject matter domains becomes more and more important in several socio-economic etc. investigation areas the management of so-called metadata – a formal digital processing of information about data – gains tremendously increasing relevance. Unlike current information technologies (e.g., database systems, computer networks, ...) facilitating merely the technical side of data collation, a coherent integration of empirical data still remains cumbersome, and thus rather costly, very often because of a lack of powerful semantic data models capturing the very meaning and structure of statistical data sets. Recognizing this deficiency, "Metadata Management" proposes a general framework for the computer-aided integration and harmonization of distributed heterogeneous statistical data sources, aiming at a truly comprehensive statistical meta-information system.

Metadecisions: Rehabilitating Epistemology (Contemporary Systems Thinking)

Metadecisions: Rehabilitating Epistemology constitutes an epistemological inquiry about the foundations of knowledge of a scientific discipline. This text warns contemporary scientific disciplines that neglecting epistemological issues threatens the viability of their pronouncements and designs. It shows that the processes by which complex artefacts are created require a pluralistic approach to artefact design. It argues that viable solutions to fundamental problems in each discipline require cooperation, creativity and respect for contributions from all walks of life, all levels of logic and all standards of rigor - be they in the natural sciences, the social sciences, engineering sciences, management, the law or political sciences. Several true cases, obtained from different walks of life are used to illustrate logic levels in problems and how the application of the process of modeling/metamodeling helps to conceptualize problem dysfunctions and to convert decisions into metadecisions. Ten cases spanning subjects like Doctor Assisted Suicides (DASs), Advising Women on The Risks of Mammograms, a Deregulation Crusade, The Crash of TWA Flight 800, The Control of The World Wide Web, The Creation of the US Department of Homeland Security, among others, are used to illustrate the application of the metasystem framework to increase knowledge and meaning of fundamental problems. The design of any human activity requires the intervention of several inquiring systems where the manager, the engineer, the scientist, the lawyer, the epistemologist, the ethicist and even the artist contribute to shape how problems in the real-world are formulated, how decisions/metadecisions to solve problems are taken, and finally, how actions are implemented.

Metaeconomics: Tempering Excessive Greed (Palgrave Advances in Behavioral Economics)

This book presents the Metaeconomics Framework and Dual Interest Theory, which weave the empathy-based moral and ethical dimension back into key economic questions. Metaeconomics addresses the problem of placing too much emphasis on the market or the government, and thus argues that seeing the link between ego and empathy, self- and other-interest, and market and government will lead to a more just, fair, and sustainable polity. The unique Dual Interest Theory proposes that ego-based self-interest and empathy-based other-interest are joint and internal to each person: it maintains the original proposition from Adam Smith that each person maximizes their own-interest, which Metaeconomics makes clear involves balancing the two joint interests, although self-interest is more primal. The book begins with an explanation of how Metaeconomics connects the other kinds of economics. The book then provides a series of applications of Metaeconomics in heated policy issues, such as elections, finance, family, food, health, natural resources, education, taxes, and extreme inequality, among others. Finally, the book concludes that the only way to save capitalism is to bring empathy into both private and public actions and bring about a more humane balance in market and government.

Metagraphs and Their Applications (Integrated Series in Information Systems #15)

This book details metagraph theory and its applications. It begins by defining a metagraph and its uses, which allow for the representation and analysis of more complex systems. The first part of the book develops the theoretical results with an emphasis on the development of a metagraph algebra. In the second part, four promising applications of metagraphs are examined.

Metaheuristic Optimization via Memory and Evolution: Tabu Search and Scatter Search (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series #30)

Tabu Search (TS) and, more recently, Scatter Search (SS) have proved highly effective in solving a wide range of optimization problems, and have had a variety of applications in industry, science, and government. The goal of Metaheuristic Optimization via Memory and Evolution: Tabu Search and Scatter Search is to report original research on algorithms and applications of tabu search, scatter search or both, as well as variations and extensions having "adaptive memory programming" as a primary focus. Individual chapters identify useful new implementations or new ways to integrate and apply the principles of TS and SS, or that prove new theoretical results, or describe the successful application of these methods to real world problems.

Metaheuristic Procedures for Training Neural Networks (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series #35)

This book provides successful implementations of metaheuristic methods for neural network training. It is the first book to achieve this objective. Moreover, the basic principles and fundamental ideas given in the book will allow the readers to create successful training methods on their own. Overall, the book's aim is to provide a broad coverage of the concepts, methods, and tools of the important area of ANNs within the realm of continuous optimization.

Metaheuristic Search Concepts: A Tutorial with Applications to Production and Logistics

In many decision problems, e.g. from the area of production and logistics manage ment, the evaluation of alternatives and the determination of an optimal or at least suboptimal solution is an important but dif?cult task. For most such problems no ef?cient algorithm is known and classical approaches of Operations Research like Mixed Integer Linear Programming or Dynamic Pro gramming are often of limited use due to excessive computation time. Therefore, dedicated heuristic solution approaches have been developed which aim at providing good solutions in reasonable time for a given problem. However, such methods have two major drawbacks: First, they are tailored to a speci?c prob lem and their adaption to other problems is dif?cult and in many cases even impos sible. Second, they are typically designed to “build” one single solution in the most effective way, whereas most decision problems have a vast number of feasible solu tions. Hence usually the chances are high that there exist better ones. To overcome these limitations, problem independent search strategies, in particular metaheuris tics, have been proposed. This book provides an elementary step by step introduction to metaheuristics focusing on the search concepts they are based on. The ?rst part demonstrates un derlying concepts of search strategies using a simple example optimization problem.

Metaheuristics: Progress in Complex Systems Optimization (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series #39)

This book’s aim is to provide several different kinds of information: a delineation of general metaheuristics methods, a number of state-of-the-art articles from a variety of well-known classical application areas as well as an outlook to modern computational methods in promising new areas. Therefore, this book may equally serve as a textbook in graduate courses for students, as a reference book for people interested in engineering or social sciences, and as a collection of new and promising avenues for researchers working in this field.

Metaheuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series #32)

Metaheuristics: Progress as Real Problem Solvers is a peer-reviewed volume of eighteen current, cutting-edge papers by leading researchers in the field. Included are an invited paper by F. Glover and G. Kochenberger, which discusses the concept of Metaheuristic agent processes, and a tutorial paper by M.G.C. Resende and C.C. Ribeiro discussing GRASP with path-relinking. Other papers discuss problem-solving approaches to timetabling, automated planograms, elevators, space allocation, shift design, cutting stock, flexible shop scheduling, colorectal cancer and cartography. A final group of methodology papers clarify various aspects of Metaheuristics from the computational view point.

Metaheuristics: Methods And Case Studies (Studies in Computational Intelligence #433)

Metaheuristics exhibit desirable properties like simplicity, easy parallelizability, and ready applicability to different types of optimization problems. After a comprehensive introduction to the field, the contributed chapters in this book include explanations of the main metaheuristics techniques, including simulated annealing, tabu search, evolutionary algorithms, artificial ants, and particle swarms, followed by chapters that demonstrate their applications to problems such as multiobjective optimization, logistics, vehicle routing, and air traffic management. The authors are leading researchers in this domain, with considerable teaching and applications experience, and the book will be of value to industrial practitioners, graduate students, and research academics.

Metaheuristics and Optimization in Civil Engineering (Modeling and Optimization in Science and Technologies #7)

This timely book deals with a current topic, i.e. the applications of metaheuristic algorithms, with a primary focus on optimization problems in civil engineering. The first chapter offers a concise overview of different kinds of metaheuristic algorithms, explaining their advantages in solving complex engineering problems that cannot be effectively tackled by traditional methods, and citing the most important works for further reading. The remaining chapters report on advanced studies on the applications of certain metaheuristic algorithms to specific engineering problems. Genetic algorithm, bat algorithm, cuckoo search, harmony search and simulated annealing are just some of the methods presented and discussed step by step in real-application contexts, in which they are often used in combination with each other. Thanks to its synthetic yet meticulous and practice-oriented approach, the book is a perfect guide for graduate students, researchers and professionals willing to applying metaheuristic algorithms in civil engineering and other related engineering fields, such as mechanical, transport and geotechnical engineering. It is also a valuable aid for both lectures and advanced engineering students.

Metaheuristics for Business Analytics: A Decision Modeling Approach (EURO Advanced Tutorials on Operational Research)

This essential metaheuristics tutorial provides descriptions and practical applications in the area of business analytics. It addresses key problems in predictive and prescriptive analysis, while also illustrating how problems that arise in business analytics can be modelled and how metaheuristics can be used to find high-quality solutions. Readers will be introduced to decision-making problems for which metaheuristics offer the most effective solution technique. The book not only shows business problem modelling on a spreadsheet but also how to design and create a Visual Basic for Applications code.

Metaheuristics for Enterprise Data Intelligence (Advances in Metaheuristics)

With the emergence of the data economy, information has become integral to business excellence. Every enterprise, irrespective of its domain of interest, carries and processes a lot of data in their day-to-day activities. Converting massive datasets into insightful information plays an important role in developing better business solutions. Data intelligence and its analysis pose several challenges in data representation, building knowledge systems, issue resolution and predictive systems for trend analysis and decisionmaking. The data available could be of any modality, especially when data is associated with healthcare, biomedical, finance, retail, cybersecurity, networking, supply chain management, manufacturing, etc. The optimization of such systems is therefore crucial to leveraging the best outcomes and conclusions. To this end, AI-based nature-inspired optimization methods or approximation-based optimization methods are becoming very powerful. Notable metaheuristics include genetic algorithms, differential evolution, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony, grey wolf optimizer, political optimizer, cohort intelligence and league championship algorithm. This book provides a systematic discussion of AI-based metaheuristics application in a wide range of areas, including big data intelligence and predictive analytics, enterprise analytics, graph optimization algorithms, machine learning and ensemble learning, computer vision enterprise practices and data benchmarking.

Metaheuristics for Enterprise Data Intelligence (Advances in Metaheuristics)

With the emergence of the data economy, information has become integral to business excellence. Every enterprise, irrespective of its domain of interest, carries and processes a lot of data in their day-to-day activities. Converting massive datasets into insightful information plays an important role in developing better business solutions. Data intelligence and its analysis pose several challenges in data representation, building knowledge systems, issue resolution and predictive systems for trend analysis and decisionmaking. The data available could be of any modality, especially when data is associated with healthcare, biomedical, finance, retail, cybersecurity, networking, supply chain management, manufacturing, etc. The optimization of such systems is therefore crucial to leveraging the best outcomes and conclusions. To this end, AI-based nature-inspired optimization methods or approximation-based optimization methods are becoming very powerful. Notable metaheuristics include genetic algorithms, differential evolution, ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, artificial bee colony, grey wolf optimizer, political optimizer, cohort intelligence and league championship algorithm. This book provides a systematic discussion of AI-based metaheuristics application in a wide range of areas, including big data intelligence and predictive analytics, enterprise analytics, graph optimization algorithms, machine learning and ensemble learning, computer vision enterprise practices and data benchmarking.

Metaheuristics for Finding Multiple Solutions (Natural Computing Series)

This book presents the latest trends and developments in multimodal optimization and niching techniques. Most existing optimization methods are designed for locating a single global solution. However, in real-world settings, many problems are “multimodal” by nature, i.e., multiple satisfactory solutions exist. It may be desirable to locate several such solutions before deciding which one to use. Multimodal optimization has been the subject of intense study in the field of population-based meta-heuristic algorithms, e.g., evolutionary algorithms (EAs), for the past few decades. These multimodal optimization techniques are commonly referred to as “niching” methods, because of the nature-inspired “niching” effect that is induced to the solution population targeting at multiple optima. Many niching methods have been developed in the EA community. Some classic examples include crowding, fitness sharing, clearing, derating, restricted tournament selection, speciation, etc. Nevertheless, applying these niching methods to real-world multimodal problems often encounters significant challenges.To facilitate the advance of niching methods in facing these challenges, this edited book highlights the latest developments in niching methods. The included chapters touch on algorithmic improvements and developments, representation, and visualization issues, as well as new research directions, such as preference incorporation in decision making and new application areas. This edited book is a first of this kind specifically on the topic of niching techniques.This book will serve as a valuable reference book both for researchers and practitioners. Although chapters are written in a mutually independent way, Chapter 1 will help novice readers get an overview of the field. It describes the development of the field and its current state and provides a comparative analysis of the IEEE CEC and ACM GECCO niching competitions of recent years, followed by a collection of open research questions and possible research directions that may be tackled in the future.

Metaheuristics for Hard Optimization: Methods and Case Studies

Contains case studies from engineering and operations research Includes commented literature for each chapter

Metaheuristics for Multiobjective Optimisation (Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems #535)

Metaheuristics for Production Systems (Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series #60)

This book discusses the main techniques and newest trends to manage and optimize the production and service systems. The book begins by examining the three main levels of decision systems in production: the long term (strategic), the middle term (tactical) and short term (operational). It also considers online management as a new level (a sub level of the short term). As each level encounters specific problems, appropriate approaches to deal with these are introduced and explained. These problems include the line design, the line balancing optimization, the physical layout of the production or service system, the forecasting optimization, the inventory management, the scheduling etc.Metaheuristics for Production Systems then explores logistic optimization from two different perspectives: internal (production management), addressing issues of scheduling, layout and line designs, and external (supply chain management) focusing on transportation optimization, supply chain evaluation, and location of production. The book also looks at NP-hard problems that are common in production management. These complex configurations may mean that optimal solutions may not be reached due to variables, but the authors help provide a good solution for such problems. The effective new results and solutions offered in this book should appeal to researchers, managers, and engineers in the production and service industries.