Special tools are required for examining and solving optimization problems. The main tools in the study of local optimization are classical calculus and its modern generalizions which form nonsmooth analysis. The gradient and various kinds of generalized derivatives allow us to ac- complish a local approximation of a given function in a neighbourhood of a given point. This kind of approximation is very useful in the study of local extrema. However, local approximation alone cannot help to solve many problems of global optimization, so there is a clear need to develop special global tools for...

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...

Lagrange and penalty function methods provide a powerful approach, both as a theoretical tool and a computational vehicle, for the study of constrained optimization problems. However, for a nonconvex constrained optimization problem, the classical Lagrange primal-dual method may fail to find a mini mum as a zero duality gap is not always guaranteed. A large penalty parameter is, in general, required for classical quadratic penalty functions in order that minima of penalty problems are a good approximation to those of the original constrained optimization problems. It is well-known that...