  The search for new superconducting materials approaching room temperature
benefits from having a variety of testing methodologies to confirm and
characterize the presence of superconductivity. Often the first signatures of
new superconducting species occur incompletely and in very small volume
fractions. These trace amounts may be too weak to produce an observable
Meissner effect and the resistance may not go completely to zero if the
percolation threshold is not met. Under these conditions, secondary
behavior--such as transitions or cross overs in the temperature dependence of
magnetoresistance, magnetic irreversibility, or thermopower--are often used as
indications for the presence of superconductivity. Our group has developed a
rather unique set of fast-timescale and dissipative transport measurements that
can provide another tool set for confirming and characterizing suspected
superconductivity. Here we provide some background for these methods and
elucidate their collaborative value in the search for new superconducting
materials. Keywords: pairbreaking, pair-breaking, vortex, vortices, theory,
tutorial, RTS, room-temperature superconductivity, superconductor, detection,
characterization
