This book focuses on new experimental and theoretical advances concerning the role of strange and heavy-flavour quarks in high-energy heavy-ion collisions and in astrophysical phenomena. 

The topics covered include 

?Strangeness and heavy-quark production in nuclear collisions and hadronic interactions, 

?Hadron resonances in the strongly-coupled partonic and hadronic medium, 

?Bulk matter phenomena associated with strange and heavy quarks, 

?QCD phase structure, 

?Collectivity in small systems, 

?Strangeness in astrophysics,

?Open questions and new developments.