The Predeal International Summer School, held at the Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest, Romania, is a prestigious scientific event. The school first took place in 1969 and since then it has been held every two years.This year the lectures were given by more than 30 outstanding professors, covering timely subjects in theoretical and experimental nuclear physics. In addition, there were special sessions of contributed papers presenting the most recent results in these domains. The aim of the school was thus two-fold: to give basic information on some hot subjects of research in nuclear physics and to present them with the most recent achievements in these fields. This volume contains the proceedings of the school.

The ENAM2001 Conference was held on July 2-7, 2001 at the Rantasipi Aulanko Hotel in Hameenlinna in southern Finland. The conference was organized by the Department of Physics and the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyvaskyla with support from the Physics Departments of the Universities of Helsinki and Turku. This conference, Exotic Nuclei and Atomic Masses has now gained the status of a major nuclear physics serial conference. The previous conference was held in Bellaire, Michigan, USA. The conference was first held in 1967 in Lysekil, Sweden, then entitled Conference on Nuclei Far from Stability. ENAM2001 welcomed 270 participants from 34 countries, including 17 accompanying per sons. The content of the program was selected based on the advice of the International Advisory Committee. The Committee members read and considered 253 submitted abstracts in selecting oral contributions. During the conference week 76 invited and oral talks were given. The rest of the contributions were presented in dedicated poster sessions. Many thanks go to the speakers of oral and poster presentations for their enthusiasm and for the high quality of their work which demonstrated the liveliness of the field. Participation in the lectures was high and contributions from the audience were important towards the success of this conference. The organizers would like to especially thank Cary Davids of Argonne National Laboratory for his comprehensive summary talk, which is also included in these Proceedings.

Gives an account of advances and various perspectives in the study of nuclei far from stability. This book deals with book nuclear structure models and their derivation from the basic nucleon-nucleon interaction. It discusses: the shell model, the interacting boson model and the cluster model."

The recent rapid innovations in supercomputer technology are changing the concepts of numerical calculations employed in solving a wide variety of nuclear many-body problems. The purpose of the XVII RCNP International Symposium on Innovative Computational Methods in Nuclear Many-Body Problems (INNOCOM97) was to discuss the frontiers of various computational methods and to exchange ideas in wide fields of nuclear physics. The subjects discussed at the symposium covered almost all the areas of nuclear physics.

The proceedings of the conference on Exotic Nuclei and Atomic Masses (ENAM98) are the scientific contributions to the most recent meeting in a long series that dates back to the late 1950s. The conference is held every three years and the participants produce a complete review of the fields of exotic nuclei; atomic masses, moments and radii of nuclei; fission, synthesis of heavy elements, the role of radioactive nuclei in the cosmos, fundamental studies and use of radioactive ion beams. The proceedings provide an excellent overview and an up to date summary of recent developments in a field that is undergoing a rapid growth due to the advent of radioactive ion beams.

These proceedings present the most recent progress made by Japanese and Italian researchers in the field of heavy ion physics. They cover both experimental and theoretical aspects from low energies (Tandem Van de Graaff accelerators) to medium energies (LINAC, Cyclotrons) up to relativistic energies (LHC at CERN).The majority of the experiments presented have been performed in the two largest Italian laboratories: LNL, Legnaro-Padova, with the Tandem + SC Linac (ALPI); LNS, Catania, with the Tandem + SC Cyclotron; and in one of the largest Japanese facilities: RIKEN, Saitama, with the Ring Cyclotron.The future Italian developments with relativistic heavy ions at LHC (CERN) are also presented, as well as experiments in collaboration with other laboratories, like JAERI, CNS (University of Tokyo), the Tandem Accelerator Center (Tsukuba), GANIL (France), and the Accelerator Laboratory in Munich, Germany.The highlights of the proceedings, and the area in which most experimental efforts are presently involved, are: research with radioactive ion beams at RIKEN with the RIPS separator; spectroscopy study at LNL with the GASP/EUROBALL 4πγ spectrometers; and intermediate energy hysics (deep inelastic, fragmentation) at LNS.Also presented are the future trends in Japan at RIKEN, RiBeam Factory, and JHP at KEK, and in Italy EXCYT at LNS and SPES at LNL. All these new developments are strongly connected with production and subsequent exploitation of radioactive ion beams, and offer a very promising, fertile future.

The Mean Field is a powerful, fruitful concept and provides an ideal first step towards the Solution of the Many Body Problem. Chapters start from the basics and are gradually built up to the current state of the art level.