Research focused on understanding the properties of pions and eta mesons and their interactions with nucleons will be performed. The two major objectives are: (1) measurements of the cross sections for production of eta and eta-prime mesons with photons incident on hydrogen and deuterium, and (2) a precise measurement of the decay rate for the pion beta decay process. The measurements will yield stringent tests of our understanding of the properties of these mesons, quark-lepton universality, and radiative corrections within the Standard Model. Both experiments are high priority activities in contemporary nuclear physics and studies of fundamental symmetries. Development, construction, and utilization of major state-of-the-art equipment is integral to this activity. Education of graduate students is a strong component in every aspect of this grant. ***
