This volume places emphasis on the role of quark matter as well as cosmic QCD phase transition in cosmology and astrophysics. It also contains reviews summarizing the state-of-the-art and projecting future developments in the area of high currency.

Experimental overview; muon pair production in heavy ion interaction at 200GeV per nucleon; photon multiplicity measurements - present and future; electromagnetic probes of quark-gluon plasma; Monte Carlo simulation of ultrarelativistic nuclear collision - an overview; the quark-hadron transition in the early universe; physics and astrophysics of strange quark matter; on the survivability of cosmological quark nuggets; astrophysical studies with radioactive beams; multiparticle production in highly excited nuclear matter; nuclear spin structure measurements at SLAC. (Part contents.)