Nuclear astrophysics: A review of the most interesting recent results.

Measuring neutron capture cross-sections on unstable nuclei and their half-lives in stellar plasma is the ultimate frontier of experimental nuclear astrophysics. However, many other pivotal results have been achieved so far. Among the most recent ones we review 4 cases. The $^{12}C+\,^{12}C$ reaction, whose measurements by an indirect technique has been extensively debated and turned out to deeply affect the exploitability of the SN progenitors. The $^{7}Be+{n}$ reaction, involved the cosmological lithium problem, whose rate has been measured by two different approaches demonstrating the feasibility of investigating neutron capture cross-sections on unstable nuclei at astrophysical energies. The $^{13}C({a}, {n})^{16}O$ and $^{22}Ne({a}, {n})^{25}Mg$ reactions that are the neutron sources for the $s$-process and have been measured with high precision in order to provide constraints to both the $s$- and the $r$-process nucleosynthesis. The $^{17}O({p}, {a})^{14}N$ and $^{17}O({p}, {g})^{18}F$ reactions, whose roles in the radiative H-burning are well known, but whose nucleosynthesis yields vary significantly according with the reaction rate recommended by the different authors, defining different scenarios for the nucleosynthesis of $^{17}O$ and $^{18}O$.