Preface to the Special Issue: International Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics in Heavy-Ion Reactions and Neutron Stars

The International Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics in Heavy-Ion Reactions and Neutron Stars was held from 9-14 July 2007 in Beijing. This workshop was organized by Beijing Normal University, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Jiatong University, Huzhou Teachers' College, Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS) of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), University of Catania, and Texas A & M University-Commerce. More than 60 physicists, from local and abroad, participated in the workshop and more than 35 of them presented talks. The workshop covered a great variety of hot topics, including nuclear reaction dynamics and isospin effects in heavy-ion collisions, EOS of nuclear matter and neutron stars, phase transitions of nuclear matter (liquid-to-gas in low energy HIC, QGP in high energy HIC, color superconductivity), exotic nuclei and structure of hadronic matter in the high density regime (neutron star inner core).