This volume presents new trends and developments in soft computing techniques. Topics include: neural networks, fuzzy systems, evolutionary computation, knowledge discovery, rough sets, and hybrid methods. It also covers various applications of soft computing techniques in economics, mechanics, medicine, automatics and image processing. The book contains contributions from internationally recognized scientists, such as Zadeh, Bubnicki, Pawlak, Amari, Batyrshin, Hirota, Koczy, Kosinski, Novák, S.-Y. Lee, Pedrycz, Raudys, Setiono, Sincak, Strumillo, Takagi, Usui, Wilamowski and Zurada. An excellent overview of soft computing methods and their applications.