This volume addresses the important questions at the interface of particle physics, cosmology and nuclear astrophysics. It includes the latest results from LEP 2, primordial nucleosynthesis and dark matter, experiments to measure the cosmic background radiation and experiments in the laboratory with radioactive beams to ascertain the importance of astrophysics in the universe. Also presented are the new results at highest momentum transfer in positron-proton collisions from HERA.

This volume stresses the important physics developments at various collider facilities. Details of detector systems and their special features for exploiting the strength of a particular collider are also emphasized. The theoretical studies pursue the limits of the standard model and explore the new physics that may emerge at high energy facilities. The lectures are of a pedagogical nature, so that they are useful to students and post-doctoral fellows.

This volume deals with the electroweak interactions at low and high energies. The results of the collider experiments are discussed, and the low energy experiments with complications for astrophysics are considered. Also, theoretical developments are presented to highlight the impact of forthcoming experiments and to find new directions of study.

The proceedings of the Lake Louise Winter Institute for 1998 deal with strong interactions. This includes the jet physics and fragmentation functions as needed in high energy collider physics, deep inelastic scattering to study the structure functions of nucleons, and finally physics with the production and hadronization of quark-gluon plasma at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Both the theoretical developments and experimental data were presented with the intent of establishing their relationship and finding new directions of study.