The International Conference Mesons and Light Nuclei, organized by the Institute of Nuclear Physics (INP), Rez, was held during July 2 - 7, 1995 in small north Bohemian town Straz pod Ralskem. It was the sixth in a series of meetings which took place previously at Liblice 74 and 81, Bechyne 85 and 88, and Prague 91. The conferences gained already their firm position among intermediate energy nuclear physics activities. International nuclear physics community strongly supported our intention to continue the series. This year's venue for the conference was the accommodation and social area of the DIAMO company at Straz. The goal of the meeting was to summarize the present situation and the future perspectives concerning the experimental investigations and theoreti cal descriptions of light nuclei and their interactions with electromagnetic and hadronic probes, mainly at intermediate energies. The scientific program of the conference included the following areas of research: nuclear physics with pions and antiprotons, T)-meson physics, baryonic systems with strangeness, relativis tic few-body dynamics, and electroweak nuclear interaction. Representatives from many international groups working within different experimental facili ties and with different theoretical methods were invited and asked to present their latest results and future research programs. The Straz conference, attended by 102 physicist from institutions in 22 countries, was sponsored by the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research, Czech Ministry for Industry and Trade, and by SKODA PRAHA a.s. Thanks to this sponsorship we could also invite several participants and students at essentially reduced cost.

Progress in Nuclear Physics, Volume 9 is a collection of six papers dealing with nuclear physics. The monograph discusses the significance of visual techniques in the development of high energy physics; the development of solid semiconductor detectors; theoretical techniques of high-energy beam design; and the structure analysis of collision amplitudes. The book explains that the spark technique is preferred over the bubble chamber when used in experiments with continuous sources of radiation. The use of germanium and silicon semiconductor detectors has enabled advances in studies on protons, alphas, and heavy ions, through fast response time, ease of construction, and simple power requirements. The problems encountered in beam design and effective uses of large accelerators are discussed extensively. For example, the book explains that inefficient beam practice can diminish intensity factors in the accelerator, so different beam designs such as the quadruple and the separated beam design as well as the pulsed high-field magnets are considered. The link between theory and experiment of collision amplitudes is reviewed, including structure analysis in the physics of elementary particles. The resulting processes after strange particles such as K-mesons interact with nuclei, instead of reacting with individual nucleons, are briefly noted. The text also includes discussion on the essential electromagnetic properties of the muon and the different research by Crowe, Charpak et al., and Hughes et al. about this subject. This collection of papers will prove useful for nuclear physicists, scientists, and academicians in the field of nuclear physics.