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Shear viscosity is a transport coefficient in the hydrodynamic description of liquids, gases and plasmas. The ratio of the shear viscosity and the volume density of the entropy has the dimension of the ratio of two fundamental constants - the Planck constant and the Boltzmann constant - and characterizes how close a given fluid is to a perfect fluid. Transport coefficients are notoriously difficult to compute from first principles. Recent progress in string theory, in particular the development of the gauge-gravity duality, has enabled one to approach this problem from a totally unexpected perspective. In my talk, I will describe the connection between the dynamics of black hole horizons (encoded in their quasinormal spectra) and the hydrodynamics of certain strongly coupled plasmas. I will comment on the relevance of this approach for the interpretation of data obtained in experiments on heavy ion collisions.

In an anisotropic limit of the weakly-coupled, 2+1-dimensional non-Abelian gauge theories are equivalent to a collection of integrable 1+1-dimensional quantum field theories. This fact makes it possible to understand confinement near this limit. Using exact form factors, it is possible to study the theory away from the extreme anisotropic limit. The string tension between fundamental color sources is found. Adjoint sources are not confined. Some ideas concerning the isotropic case and the generalization to 3+1 dimensions will be discussed.

Theories of physics beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of relativistic strings, either as composite objects, or as fundamental constituents of matter. If they were created in the Big Bang, they would very likely still be present in the universe today. This talk reviews the thirty year history of cosmic strings, and describes the latest work which finds intriguing hints in the Cosmic Microwave Background data that the universe is filled with string.

To realize massive pions, I propose a variation of the holographic model of massless QCD using the D4/D8/D8bar-brane configuration proposed by Sakai and Sugimoto. The deformation breaks the chiral symmetry explicitly and I compute the mass of the pions and vector mesons. The observed value of the pion mass can be obtained. I also argue a chiral perturbation corresponding to the deformation.