  The correlation between baryon number and strangeness elucidates the nature
of strongly interacting matter, such as that formed transiently in high-energy
nuclear collisions. This diagnostic can be extracted theoretically from lattice
QCD calculations and experimentally from event-by-event fluctuations. The
analysis of present lattice results above the critical temperature severely
limits the presence of q-qbar bound states, thus supporting a picture of
independent (quasi)quarks.
