Light Mesons from Heavy B and Hyperon Decays

Decays of heavy mesons and of heavy hyperons are used to provide tests of the standard model and information about new mixing schemes for the $\eta$ and $\eta^{'}$ mesons. These include the two body decays $B_s \to J / \psi M$ and $B_d \to J / \psi M$, $B \to \eta (\eta ^{'})K(K^\ast)$ and $\Lambda_b \to \Lambda \eta (\eta ^{'})$, semileptonic $D$ decays, and properties of radially excited mesons.