Superconductivity has undergone tremendous advances in recent years. Most notable of course was the discovery of high temperature superconductivity in the cuprates. This discovery resulted in an enormous influx of new workers to the field representing a host of experimental and theoretical disciplines. When we combine this with the discovery of superconductivity in other materials such as heavy-fermion metals, MgB2, various organics, fullerenes, field-effect devices, magnetic metals under pressure, and presumably non s-symmetry triplet Cooper-pairing in ruthenates (e. g. Sr2Ru04) we have an enrichment of the phenomena superconductivity. This resulted in an explosion of interest in the field. Many of the new superconductors are being called unconventional, either with respect to the pairing mechanism or the symmetry of the under­ lying order parameter. Yet in spite of these new materials and directions, continuing studies of conventional electron-phonon based superconductivity remain interesting. With the aid of historical hindsight, we expect the field to continue to advance in unexpected directions. Nonetheless it is our view that a state of the art treatise on superconductivity is justified at this time, not only to summarize the present understanding, but also to introduce newcomers to the field, as was the case with the two justly-famous 1968 "bibles of super­ conductivity" by our former colleague R. D. Parks for an earlier generation. Hopefully the present books might help to point the way for future workers, research and discoveries.

A typical method of dealing with input and output constraints, especially for PID control, has been the empirical design and implementation of an intuitive solution to an individual plant and its constraints. Such ad hoc solutions perform surprisingly well but often remain in the form of isolated practical know-how without a more general scientific basis.

In the last few decades, multiscale algorithms have become a dominant trend in large-scale scientific computation. Researchers have successfully applied these methods to a wide range of simulation and optimization problems. This book gives a general overview of multiscale algorithms; applications to general combinatorial optimization problems such as graph partitioning and the traveling salesman problem; and VLSICAD applications, including circuit partitioning, placement, and VLSI routing. Additional chapters discuss optimization in reconfigurable computing, convergence in multilevel optimization, and model problems with PDE constraints.