The Influence of Nuclear Structure and Reactions in Astrophysics

Nuclear astrophysics has seen a strong renaissance in the last decade. New facilities, able to accelerate radioactive nuclei or high intensity stable beams, have allowed us to measure in the laboratory reactions involving short-lived nuclei or processes with very small cross sections, which occur in various stellar environments. For these measurements novel, high-efficiency detector systems have been developed. In this talk I will describe recent results from some critical nuclear astrophysics experiments and their implications to our understanding of stellar nucleosynthesis.(author)