The 23 papers wrangle with a core of computationally intractable NP-complete problems, the solution to which is fundamental to automated reasoning, computer-aided design and manufacturing, machine vision, databases, robotics, scheduling, designing integrated circuits and computer architecture, and computer networking. Blending theory, algorithms, and applications, they discuss such topics as backtracking and probing, the relative size of certain polynomial time solvable subclasses of satisfiability, propositional search efficiency and first-order theorem proving, a discreet Lagrangian global-search method, a general stochastic approach to solving problems with hard and soft constraints, a better upper bound for the unsatisfiability threshold, and the local search for channel assignment in cellular mobile networks. Member prices are $119 for institutions and $89 for individuals. No index. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.