The investigation of hadronic and nuclear probes with protons and electrons in the energy range of a few GeV is of great importance for the understanding of the properties of nucleons and mesons as well as of their interaction. Experimental results from studies with these beams provide the basis for the development and the tests of theoretical approaches in the energy regime of non-perturbative QCD. They can also clarify the effect of the nuclear medium on elementary reactions. The conference has reviewed the present status of this field of research. The topics have beenThe conference topics comprised investigations near energy thresholds in the tradition of the conferences on Particle Production near Threshold in Nashville, IN, USA, 1990, and Uppsala, Sweden, 1992.

This volume contains the proceedings of the IX International Conference on Hypernuclear and Strange Particle Physics (HYP 2006). This conference series is devoted to the progress of our knowledge about strangeness flavor in hadron and nuclear physics. Besides the traditional topics such as hadron structure, hypernuclear spectroscopy and weak decay of hypernuclei, a particular focus of this conference was on the properties of strange mesons and their binding in nuclear systems.

This international conference was dedicated to the interface between nuclear and elementary particle physics. It was the thirteenth in a series initiated by T.E.O. Ericson, A. de Shalit and V. F. Weisskopf at CERN in 1963. The series provides the principal international forum for the presentation and critical examination of the main results of the experimental and theoretical research in the field of interest common to nuclear and particle physics. The topics cover the energy region where nucleons must be treated as composite particles, but quarks and gluons cannot be considered asymptotically free.PAN XIII reviews the status of the field in a delicate stage of transition: new experiments and instrumental facilities are bringing in more detailed and more accurate data on the various facets of the nuclear and subnuclear universe, but we are still far from a satisfactory and complete description of nucleons and nuclei in terms of underlying quarks and their interactions.