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.