The author develops a novel analysis method for QCD sum rules (QCDSR) by applying the maximum entropy method (MEM) to arrive at an analysis with less artificial assumptions than previously held. This is a first-time accomplishment in the field. In this thesis, a reformed MEM for QCDSR is formalized and is applied to the sum rules of several channels: the light-quark meson in the vector channel, the light-quark baryon channel with spin and isospin 1/2, and several quarkonium channels at both zero and finite temperatures. This novel technique of combining QCDSR with MEM is applied to the study of quarkonium in hot matter, which is an important probe of the quark-gluon plasma currently being created in heavy-ion collision experiments at RHIC and LHC.

Bayesian analysis is today understood to be an extremely powerful method of statistical analysis, as well an approach to statistics that is particularly transparent and intuitive. It is thus being extensively and increasingly utilized in virtually every area of science and society that involves analysis of data.A widespread misconception is that Bayesian analysis is a more subjective theory of statistical inference than what is now called classical statistics. This is true neither historically nor in practice. Indeed, objective Bayesian analysis dominated the statistical landscape from roughly 1780 to 1930, long before 'classical' statistics or subjective Bayesian analysis were developed. It has been a subject of intense interest to a multitude of statisticians, mathematicians, philosophers, and scientists. The book, while primarily focusing on the latest and most prominent objective Bayesian methodology, does present much of this fascinating history.The book is written for four different audiences. First, it provides an introduction to objective Bayesian inference for non-statisticians; no previous exposure to Bayesian analysis is needed. Second, the book provides an overview of the development and current state of objective Bayesian analysis and its relationship to other statistical approaches, for those with interest in the philosophy of learning from data. Third, the book presents a careful development of the particular objective Bayesian approach that we recommend, the reference prior approach. Finally, the book presents as much practical objective Bayesian methodology as possible for statisticians and scientists primarily interested in practical applications.

The International Conference, Orbis Scientiae 1996, focused on the topics: The Neutrino Mass, Light Cone Quantization, Monopole Condensation, Dark Matter, and Gravitational Waves which we have adopted as the title of these proceedings. Was there any exciting news at the conference? Maybe, it depends on who answers the question. There was an almost unanimous agreement on the overall success of the conference as was evidenced by the fact that in the after-dinner remarks by one of us (BNK) the suggestion of organizing the conference on a biannual basis was presented but not accepted: the participants wanted the continuation of the tradition to convene annually. We shall, of course, comply. The expected observation of gravitational waves will constitute the most exciting vindication of Einstein's general relativity. This subject is attracting the attention of the experimentalists and theorists alike. We hope that by the first decade of the third millennium or earlier, gravitational waves will be detected, opening the way for a search for gravitons somewhere in the universe, presumably through the observations in the CMBR. The theoretical basis of the graviton search will take us to quantum gravity and eventually to the modification of general relativity to include the Planck scale behavior of gravity -at energies 19 of the order of 10 Ge V.

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