On the theoretical side, the scientific paradigm has shifted within the last two decades to effective field theories. The basic idea is to characterize a physical system by its energy or length scales. Within a given energy range, the important symmetries have to be identified and only the relevant degrees of freedom have to be treated explicitly, while physics at higher energy scales can be summarized by a finite set of low-energy constants. The number of those constants is limited by a systematic counting scheme and depends on the precision one aims for. The effective field theory of Quantum
Chromodynamics is called Chiral Perturbation Theory (χPT). By now, it is a standard tool for hadron physics in the threshold region. QCD on the Lattice,
as was presented by several speakers, is another promising way to understand sub-nuclear particles.

Nuclear effective field theory is an extension of χPT based on Weinberg’s suggestions. In this field, there has been considerable progress. The two-nucleon potential obtained within nuclear effective field theory has been meeting reports 32 Nuclear Physics News, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2008 developed to a precision that is as high as the one of the best phenomenological potentials. Moreover, it allows a systematic inclusion of few-body forces. The few-body forces derived in effective field theory are closely linked to experimental data, such as pion-nucleon scattering and few-body reactions employing beams with polarized particles, and thus gain predictive power for theoretical studies of nuclear matter and eventually neutronrich finite nuclei.

These new developments start to bring together previously separated communities, which made them an interesting topic for the MENU conference including the latest results from COSY, ELSA, MAMI, JLAB, and RIKEN. The recent theoretical approaches of modifications of mesons in a nuclear environment were reviewed. The recent experimental results for exotic atoms obtained at DAφNE and at KEK are of high precision and have significantly increased the data base for antikaon-nucleon scattering. Kaon production both with the electromagnetic probe and hadronic probes has been investigated and evidence for some new resonances has been claimed.

The different aspects of hadron physics were completed by recent results from the electron-positron colliders. These cover both new nucleon resonances obtained from J/ψ → N as well new mesonic states in the charmed sector.

Finally, new facilities were presented including MAMI-C, the JLAB upgrade to 12GeV, J-PARC, and the FAIR project. D. Habs of Munic entertained the participants with a talk at the banquet with a forecast to laserdriven accelerators.