Cluster aspects of heavy-ion physics

The development of experimental facilities and, first of all, heavy-ion accelerators, as well as the arisal of new concepts and computational resources brought about the discovery of a number of highly excited states of nuclei and mechanisms of nuclear reactions. Presently, considerable success has been achieved in understanding complicated phenomena connected with cluster aspects of nuclear structure and nuclear reactions. The construction of experimental criteria allowing the basic structure to be distinguished and these states to be identified among a great number of others is the most important problem