This volume contains, in part, a selection of papers presented at the
sixth Australian Optimization Day Miniconference (Ballarat, 16 July
1999), and the Special Sessions on Nonlinear Dynamics and Optimization
and Operations Re- search - Methods and Applications, which were held in
Melbourne, July 11-15 1999 as a part of the Joint Meeting of the
American Mathematical Society and Australian Mathematical Society. The
editors have strived to present both con- tributed papers and survey
style papers as a more interesting mix for readers. Some participants
from the meetings mentioned above have responded to this approach by
preparing survey and 'semi-survey' papers, based on presented lectures.
Contributed paper, which contain new and interesting results, are also
included. The fields of the presented papers are very large as
demonstrated by the following selection of key words from selected
papers in this volume: - optimal control, stochastic optimal control,
MATLAB, economic models, implicit constraints, Bellman principle, Markov
process, decision-making under uncertainty, risk aversion, dynamic
programming, optimal value function. - emergent computation, complexity,
traveling salesman problem, signal estimation, neural networks, time
congestion, teletraffic. - gap functions, nonsmooth variational
inequalities, derivative-free algo- rithm, Newton's method. - auxiliary
function, generalized penalty function, modified Lagrange func- tion. -
convexity, quasiconvexity, abstract convexity.
