This volume contains the lectures presented by invited speakers at the IV La Rlibida International Summer School on Nuclear Physics. This was the IV edition of a summer school organized by our group every three years on topics related to nuclear physics. This Summer School was aimed mainly at young nuclear physicists, both theoreticians and experimentalists, engaged in research work at predoctoral or recent postdoctoral level. The topics treated in the three previous editions of the School were: "Heavy Ion Collisions", "Theory of Nuclear Structure and Reactions" and "Nuclear As trophysics". This year's School was entitled "Nuclear Physics at the Borderlines". Special emphasis was placed on those topics along which nuclear physics is ex pected to develop in the next few years. The aim of the School was to provide the attendants with an opportunity to get into close contact with experienced researchers and listen to their account of the present state-of-the-art in nuclear physics and the main future lines of development.

This is a collection of invited talks and oral contributions presented by the leading scientists in their fields, summarizing the most recent progress of, and new prospects for, nuclear physics research.It covers a broad range of the recent developments in nuclear physics: reactions between massive nuclei leading to superheavy element formation; radioactive beams and neutron-rich systems; exotic nuclei and nuclear astrophysics; new states of nuclear matter.

This is a collection of invited talks and oral contributions presented by the leading scientists in their fields, summarizing the most recent progress of, and new prospects for, nuclear physics research.It covers a broad range of the recent developments in nuclear physics: reactions between massive nuclei leading to superheavy element formation; radioactive beams and neutron-rich systems; exotic nuclei and nuclear astrophysics; new states of nuclear matter.

Subjects at the forefront of many-particle research, like high-temperature superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, heavy fermions, tunneling of quantal systems with many degrees of freedom, Monte Carlo calculations on a lattice etc., were presented. The meeting was well timed as it coincided with a very active period of research in the study of superconductivity and thus provided an excellent opportunity to assess some of the major developments that have taken place in the last years.

"The goal of this volume is to discuss the rapidly moving field of atom optics and interferometry with all its intricate aspects ranging from fundamental physics to applications and the theory of relativity. The breathtaking success in manipulating atoms using lasers has encouraged these two so far disjunct communities to move closer together and begin collaborations. After an introduction to atom optics and Bose-Einstein condensation, the theoretical foundations of cold atom interferometers, their use to test gravity, and their implementation in laboratory measurements of the earth rotation and of Newton's gravitational constant are discussed. Several papers discuss the characteristics of gyroscopes and interferometers as sensors for inertial forces, starting from gyroscopes based on light waves and comparing their sensitivity to those based on matter waves. The final topic is the variation of fundamental constants, a subject that during the last years has attracted a lot of --

Presents discussion of the role played by two subtle and somehow puzzling quantum numbers, the strangeness and the spin, in fundamental physics.