The seventh volume of this invaluable series focuses an applications ? from Ising models to the formation of small clusters and phase ordering in fluids, to the structure of concrete, to the growth of cities built from it, to the traffic jams and the biology of life in the cities, and to the marketing of products to consumers. Thus the interdisciplinary research potential of computational physics is particularly well documented.

This series of books covers all areas of computational physics, collecting together reviews where a newcomer can learn about the state of the art regarding methods and results.The present volume emphasizes simulations of specific materials (polymers, water, and amphiphilic systems), and then discusses surfaces, percolation, and critical slowing-down. Also emphasized is complex optimization, such as spin glasses, simulated annealing, and the graph colouring problem.

This book series in the rapidly growing field of computational physics offers up-to-date (submitted to the publisher by electronic mail) reviews for the researcher.The first volume, written by authors from four continents, emphasizes statistical physics. For example, Ising problems are reviewed where theoretical approaches led to contradictory approaches and only quality computing answered who is right. In addition, fields as diverse as neural networks, granular materials, and computer algebra are reviewed.The next volume on percolation and other fields is already in preparation.

The sixth volume of the series covers topics ranging from the generation of good random numbers to statistical physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computers and polymers, to protein folding and immunology simulations. It should thus be of interest not only to computational physicists but also to experts in computer science as well as theoretical biology.

The ninth volume of Annual Reviews of Computational Physics has as a special feature a comprehensive compendium of interatomic potentials as used for materials properties. Other articles deal with simulations of magnetic nanostructures, improved Monte Carlo methods (e.g. for nucleation studies in Ising models), fluid dynamics with large mean free paths, the growing field of ?sociophysics,? and teaching of undergraduate computational physics (including an introduction to Java).

This series of books covers all areas of computational physics, collecting together reviews where a newcomer can learn about the state of the art regarding methods and results. Articles are submitted by e-mail before deadlines which are kept by the editor.Biologically motivated simulations, glasses, world-record molecular dynamics, deposition on surfaces, and hydrodynamics are discussed in this volume which ends with an explanation of elementary particle physics (QCD) and their phase transitions.