This proceedings volume collected papers presented at a recent symposium on Chiral Symmetry in Hadrons and Nuclei — the seventh in a series of international symposia — with an aim of providing a platform for discussions among the experts and an overview of the present status in the hadron and nuclear physics related to the chiral symmetry.The recent past years have seen a remarkable progress towards a unified description of nonperturbative strong interaction phenomena based on the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, Quantum ChromoDynamics, and Effective Field Theories. The topics discussed in these proceedings include: chiral and heavy-quark spin symmetry; chiral dynamics of few-body hadron systems; chiral symmetry and hadrons in a nuclear medium; chiral dynamics in nucleon-nucleon interaction and atomic nuclei; chiral symmetry in rotating nuclei; hadron structure and interactions; exotic hadrons, heavy flavor hadrons and nuclei; mesonic atoms and nuclei.

Chiral symmetry, a basic symmetry of the strong interaction and thus of QCD, plays a major role in low energy hadron physics. This workshop highlighted its importance for the understanding of hadron properties, hadron matter and recent precise lattice and experimental results. Besides, heavy quark physics was also addressed.

This proceedings volume collected papers presented at a recent symposium on Chiral Symmetry in Hadrons and Nuclei -- the seventh in a series of international symposia -- with an aim of providing a platform for discussions among the experts and an overview of the present status in the hadron and nuclear physics related to the chiral symmetry. The recent past years have seen a remarkable progress towards a unified description of nonperturbative strong interaction phenomena based on the fundamental theory of the strong interaction, Quantum ChromoDynamics, and Effective Field Theories. The topics discussed in these proceedings include: chiral and heavy-quark spin symmetry; chiral dynamics of few-body hadron systems; chiral symmetry and hadrons in a nuclear medium; chiral dynamics in nucleon-nucleon interaction and atomic nuclei; chiral symmetry in rotating nuclei; hadron structure and interactions; exotic hadrons, heavy flavor hadrons and nuclei; mesonic atoms and nuclei.

This volume presents topics in which researchers in elementary particle and nuclear physics are commonly interested: nonperturbative aspects of QCD and chiral properties of hadrons, relativistic heavy ion reactions and quark-gluon plasma, nuclear matter at high temperature/ density, lattice QCD, quark structure of hadrons and nuclei, high q2 phenomena in hadrons and nuclei, heavy quarks and weak interaction, hyperon interactions and hypernuclei, relativistic nuclear theory, recent experimentals and other topics.Speakers: A A Andrianov, H Ejiri, V N Fetisov, Y Iwasaki, C Ciofi Degli Atti, V G Kadyshevsky, D I Kazakov, R Brockmann, A P Kobushkin, C M Ko, T Humanic, S H Lee, T Matsui, Y Mizuno, Y M Musakhanov, T Morü, M Namiki, S Saito, T-A Shibata, T Suzuki, A I Titov, G M Vagradov, M K Volkov, M Oka, A V Shebeko, S N Yang, G M Zinovjev, etc.

Straddling the traditional disciplines of nuclear and particle physics, hadron physics is a vital and extremely active research area, as evidenced by a 2004 Nobel prize and new research facilities, such as that scheduled to open at CERN. Scientifically it is of vital importance in extrapolating our knowledge of quark-gluon physics at the sub-nucleon level to provide a wider perspective of strongly interacting hadrons, which make up the vast bulk of known matter in the Universe. Through detailed, pedagogical chapters contributed by key international experts, Hadron Physics maps out our contemporary knowledge of the subject. It covers both the theoretical and experimental aspects of hadron structure and properties along with a wide range of specific research topics, results, and applications. Providing a full picture of activity in the field, the book highlights three particular areas of current research: computational lattice hadron physics, the structure and dynamics of hadrons, and generalized parton distributions. It provides a solid introduction, includes background theory, and presents the current state of understanding of the subject.