A brief review is given of some results of the investigations presented at the International Conference ’Phase Transitions and Related Critical and Nonlinear Phenomena in Condensed Media’, held in Makhachkala under the auspices of the Institute of Physics of the RAS Dagestan Scientific Center on 11-14 September 2002. The programme of the conference was supplemented with the topics of the 5th International Seminar ’Magnetic Phase Transitions’, held simultaneously and dedicated to the memory of late K P Belov.