This volume discusses the exciting physics with new accelerator facilities, which are being constructed or proposed in various places. The facilities are RHIC (Brookhaven), CEBAF (TJINP), SPring-8 (Nishi-Harima), RIBF (RIKEN), JHP (KEK-INS), RIB (MSU), LISS (IUCF) and COSY (Juelich). RHIC aims at the creation of a QCD deconfinement phase and the study of the properties of such matter. CEBAF and SPring-8 use leptons to probe the quark-gluon structures of hadrons and nuclei. LISS and COSY use high resolution hadron beams to study hadron structures. JHP produces strong secondary hadron beams for hyper-nuclear physics and rare decay studies of basic symmetries. RIBF and RIB produce radioactive nuclear beams for the study of the nuclear structure of unstable nuclei far from beta stability, and astrophysics issues.

This volume deals with both the experimental and theoretical aspects of meson physics; in particular, it presents new results. The main topics are: hadronic and electromagnetic meson production in various reactions; meson interaction with mesons, nucleons and nuclei; the structure of hadrons; mesons and fundamental symmetries; exotic systems. The book provides an overview of the current status of these areas, as well as of new developments, besides giving a preview of the forthcoming investigations.

This book contains important papers on the strangeness production processes and strangeness nuclear physics resulting from electromagnetic interaction. Both experimentalists and theorists in the field present information on recent activities and discuss the prospects of related fields.

This volume presents an overview of the many new and exciting results, both theoretical and experimental, in the area of spin structure functions and sum rules at low to moderate photon virtuality Q2. It includes contributions from many leading scientists in the field worldwide.The volume covers the following topics:• recent results on the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) sum rule with real photons and its extensions to virtual photons• inclusive spin structure functions at low to moderate Q2 and their moments• exclusive measurements of nucleon spin structure in the resonance region• spin polarizabilities and Compton scattering• chiral perturbation theory and other low-energy limits of QCD• lattice QCD, duality, and phenomological models• nuclear effects and the GDH sum rule in nuclei• experimental techniques (polarized targets and beams)• future plans and projects