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In the past decade, one of the major challenges of particle physics has been to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of quark flavor. In this time frame, measurements and the theoretical interpretation of their results have advanced tremendously. A much broader understanding of flavor particles has been achieved; apart from their masses and quantum numbers, there now exist detailed measurements of the characteristics of their interactions allowing stringent tests of Standard Model predictions. Among the most interesting phenomena of flavor physics is the violation of the CP symmetry that has been subtle and difficult to explore. In the past, observations of CP violation were confined to neutral K mesons, but since the early 1990s, a large number of CP-violating processes have been studied in detail in neutral B mesons. In parallel, measurements of the couplings of the heavy quarks and the dynamics for their decays in large samples of K, D, and B mesons have been greatly improved in accuracy and the results are being used as probes in the search for deviations from the Standard Model. In the near future, there will be a transition from the current to a new generation of experiments; thus a review of the status of quark flavor physics is timely. This report is the result of the work of physicists attending the 5th CKM workshop, hosted by the University of Rome "La Sapienza", September 9-13, 2008. It summarizes the results of the current generation of experiments that are about to be completed and it confronts these results with the theoretical understanding of the field which has greatly improved in the past decade. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

We report cosmic-ray proton and helium spectra in energy ranges of 1È120 GeV nucleon~1 and 1È54 GeV nucleon~1, respectively, measured by a Ñight of the Balloon-borne Experiment with Superconducting Spectrometer (BESS) in 1998. The magnetic rigidity of the cosmic ray was reliably determined by highly precise measurement of the circular track in a uniform solenoidal magnetic Ðeld of 1 T. Those spectra were determined within overall uncertainties of^5% for protons and^10% for helium nuclei including statistical and systematic errors.

The energy spectrum of cosmic-ray antiprotons (p's) has been measured in the range 0.18 to 3.56 GeV, based on 458p's collected by BESS in recent solar-minimum period. We have detected for the first time a distinctive peak at 2 GeV ofp's originating from cosmic-ray interactions with the interstellar gas. The peak spectrum is reproduced by theoretical calculations, implying that the propagation models are basically correct and that different cosmic-ray species undergo a universal propagation. Future BESS flights toward the solar maximum will help us to study the solar modulation and the propagation in detail and to search for primaryp components.PACS numbers: 98.70.Sa, 95.85.RyThe origin of cosmic-ray antiprotons (p's) has attracted much attention since their observation was first reported by Golden et al. [1]. Cosmic-rayp's should certainly be produced by the interaction of Galactic high-energy cosmic-rays with the interstellar medium. The energy spectrum of these "secondary"p's is expected to show a characteristic peak around 2 GeV, with sharp decreases of the flux below and above the peak, a generic feature which reflects the kinematics ofp production. The secondaryp's offer a unique probe [2] of cosmic-ray propagation and of solar modulation. As other possible sources of cosmic-rayp's, one can conceive novel processes, such as annihilation of neutralino dark matter or evaporation of primordial black holes [3]. Thep's from these "primary" sources, if they exist, are expected to be prominent at low energies [4] and to exhibit large solar modulations [5]. Thus they are distinguishable in principle from the secondaryp component.The detection of the secondary peak and the search for a possible low-energy primaryp component have been difficult to achieve, because of huge backgrounds and the extremely small flux especially at low energies. The first [1] and subsequent [6] evidence for cosmic-rayp's were reported at relatively high energies, where it was not possible to positively identify thep's with a mass measurement. The first "mass-identified" and thus unambiguous detection of cosmic-rayp's was performed by BESS '93 [7] in the low-energy region (4 events at 0.3 to 0.5 GeV), which was followed by IMAX [8] and CAPRICE [9] detections. The BESS '95 measured the spectrum [10] at solar minimum, based on 43p's over the range 0.18 to 1.4 GeV. We report here a new high-statistics measurement of thep spectrum based on 458 events in the energy 1

We report preliminary results on the analysis of the three-body Υ( 10860) → B Bπ, Υ(10860) → [B B * + c.c.]π and Υ(10860) → B * B * π decays including an observation of the Υ(10860) → Z ± b (10610)π ∓ → [B B * + c.c.] ± π ∓ and Υ(10860) → Z ± b (10650)π ∓ → [B * B * ] ± π ∓ decays as intermediate channels. We measure branching fractions of the three-body decays to be B(Υ(10860) → [B B * + c.c.] ± π ∓ ) = (28.3 ± 2.9 ± 4.6) × 10 −3 and B(Υ(10860) → [B * B * ] ± π ∓ ) = (14.1 ± 1.9 ± 2.4) × 10 −3 and set 90% C.L. upper limit B(Υ(10860) → [B B] ± π ∓ ) < 4.0 × 10 −3 . We also report results on the amplitude analysis of the three-body Υ(10860) → Υ(nS)π + π − , n = 1, 2, 3 decays and the analysis of the internal structure of the three-body Υ(10860) → h b (mP )π + π − , m = 1, 2 decays. The results are based on a 121.4 fb −1 data sample collected with the Belle detector at a center-of-mass energy near the Υ(10860).