  The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect provides a useful probe of cosmology and
structure formation in the Universe. Recent years have seen rapid progress in
both quality and quantity of its measurements. In this review, we overview
cosmological and astrophysical implications of recent and near future
observations of the effect. They include measuring the evolution of the cosmic
microwave background radiation temperature, the distance-redshift relation out
to high redshifts, number counts and power spectra of galaxy clusters,
distributions and dynamics of intracluster plasma, and large-scale motions of
the Universe.
