Counterfeiting, which has emerged as a recent global phenomenon, has arisen due to economic liberalisation, the changing nature of society and new competitive structures. Branding has become an increasingly important area of research in marketing as well as a crucial decision-making area in strategic marketing management. Counterfeit-related activities challenge the existing theoretical and methodological framework in many ways, particularly consumer behavior and branding. This book brings together the three areas — counterfeiting, branding and consumer behaviour — within a very robust methodological and statistical modelling framework.

In this volume, the structure and reactions of radioactive nuclei are described. The relevance of halo nuclei to nuclear astrophysics is stressed in different contributions. Other topics included are: three-body aspects of light neutron-rich nuclei, elastic scattering, charge exchange and Coulomb excitation, fragment moment distribution, mass at half-life measurement and electromagnetism-induced fission.

The main topic of the conference was the physics of strong interaction and the understanding of how quarks form hadrons, which are part of the atomic nucleus. The proceedings give a comprehensive overview of the present status of the physics of hadrons. Topics include: mesons, baryons, scalars, exotics, heavy quarks, theoretical concepts, hadrons in matter, and reactions. The timing of the conference was very fortunate as many new and surprising results appeared in the months before its start. The highlights were the discussions about the nature of the recently discovered arrow states.

This book provides an update on our understanding of strong interaction, with theoretical and experimental highlights included. It is divided into five sections. The first section is devoted to the investigations into and the latest results on the mechanism of quark confinement. The second and third sections focus respectively on light and heavy quarks (effective field theories, Schwinger-Dyson approach and lattice QCD results). The fourth section deals with the deconfinement mechanism and quark-gluon plasma formation signals. The last section presents highlights of experiments, new physics beyond QCD, and nonperturbative approaches in other theories (strings and SUSY) that may be useful in QCD.

The 20-year-old problem of the confinement and the resulting spectrum of the bound states is central to quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Many approaches have been tried starting from different points of view: the potential theory, the Bethe-Salpeter equation, string and flux tube models, bag models, vacuum structure, current algebra, lattice theory, and numerical simulations. Phenomenological assumptions and first-principle theoretical results or indications have been combined. Many partial successes have been attained, but a unified and comprehensive treatment is still lacking.In recent years, new attention has been given to the problem, both in terms of theoretical developments and for the purpose of evaluating the spectrum and other properties of the particles. In particular, attention has been focussed on areas like numerical simulations, the derivation of the potential, the use of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, the connection between the potential and the chiral symmetry approach.This workshop was an opportunity for a synthesis and a comparison of the different points of view.