The aim of the Conference was to discuss recent results and perspectives on the theoretical and experimental investigation of the structure of free hadrons and hadrons in the nuclear medium, as well as the structure of hadronic matter both at normal and extreme conditions. The Volume is a useful update of the subject for theorists and experimentalists working in medium and high energy nuclear physics.

This volume discusses theoretical and experimental activities in the investigation of nucleon and nuclear structure by electromagnetic and hadronic probes at intermediate and high energies. The focus is on laboratory activities, recent progress concerning the structure of hadrons, relativistic many-body approaches, deep inelastic scattering and correlations in nuclei.

This volume contains the invited and contributed papers presented at the Fourth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics and sent to the Editors within the deadline. The Conference was held at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, from May 12th to 16th, 2003, and was attended by about 100 scientists from 20 countries. The series ofConferences on Perspectives on Hadronic Physics takes place every two years since 1997 and follows the seven Workshops on Perspectives in Nuclear Physics at Intermediate Energies, organized every two years at ICTP since 1983. The aim of these Conferences is to discuss the status-of-the-art concerning the experimental and theoretical investigations of hadronic systems, from nucleons to nuclei and dense nuclear matter, in terms of the relevant underlying degrees of freedom. For such a reason the Fourth Conference has been focused on those experimental and theoretical topics which have been in the last few years the object of intensive investigations, viz. the various approaches employed to describe the structure of hadrons in terms of QCD and QCD inspired models, the recent developments in the treatment of the properties and propagations of hadronic states in the medium, the relevant progress done in the solution of the few- and many- hadron problems, the recent results in the experimental investigation of dense hadronic matter and, last but not least, the physics programs of existing Laboratories and the suggested projects for new Facilities.

This conference covered recent developments, both experimental and theoretical, in the study of hadron spectroscopy. It focused primarily on the spectroscopy, properties, theories and models of: light-quark mesons, heavy-quark mesons and baryons, exotic states (glueballs and hybrid mesons), and future facilities for their continued study.Special features to note include: New results were presented on the ƒ0(1500) meson from the Crystal Barrel, OBELIX and GAMS collaborations, indicating that this state is now a clear candidate for the lowest 0++ glueball; The existence of the ξ(2230) was confirmed by new data from BES; A session on future facilities; New results on charmed mesons and on hadrons with b quarks were also presented.

This volume contains the refereed and selected contributions from the International Conference on Quark Nuclear Physics (QNP2002), held from 9 to 14 June 2002 in Jülich, Germany. It covered the following topics: - Structure and Spectroscopy of Hadrons - QCD-Inspired Quark Models of Hadrons and Nuclei - Effective Theories - Lattice Gauge Theories - Soft and Hard Hadronic Processes - Soft and Hard Electroweak Processes - Medium Modifications of Hadrons - Matter Under Extreme Conditions and Quark-Gluon Plasma - Heavy-Quark Physics

The International Conference "Bologna 2000: Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the Century" was devoted to a discipline which has seen a strong revival of research activities in the last decade. New experimental results and theoretical developments in nuclear physics will certainly make important contributions to our knowledge and understanding of Nature's fundamental building blocks. The interest aroused by the Conference among the scientific community was clearly reflected in the large number of participants. These represented the most important nuclear physics laboratories in the world. The Conference covered five major topics of modern nuclear physics: nuclear structure, nucleus-nucleus collisions, hadron dynamics, nuclear astrophysics, and transdisciplinary and peaceful applications of nuclear science. It reviewed recent progress in the field and provided a forum for the discussion of current and future research projects.

This book makes a global survey of nonperturbative aspects of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) from the viewpoints of mathematical, elementary-particle and hadron physics, including recent lattice-QCD results. It presents current, important progress in the following areas: the quark confinement mechanism, dynamical chiral-symmetry breaking, topologies in QCD (instantons, monopoles, vortices), SUSY QCD, nonperturbative methods (1/Nc, ladder QCD, AdS/CFT), QCD phase transition at finite temperature and density, quark-gluon plasma, and so on. For recent topics, the book also includes the experimental discovery of the penta-quark particle, the newest information on the QGP creation experiments, and theoretical progress on the baryonic three-quark potential and the high-density QCD.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in: ? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings? (ISTP? / ISI Proceedings)? Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)? CC Proceedings ? Engineering & Physical Sciences