This U.S.-Mexico award will support Dr. James Kolata from the University of Notre Dame in a research collaboration with Dr. Eli Aguilera of the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Nucleares (ININ) in Mexico City. The researchers intend to engage in a multi-year collaborative experimental program to investigate the interactions of short-lived, radioactive nuclear species, with applications to nuclear structure physics and to nuclear astrophysics. The experiments will utilize high quality, low-energy radioactive beams recently developed at the University of Notre Dame, in collaboration with a group at the University of Michigan, and will address important physics questions related to the structures of "exotic" nuclei at the edge of the valley of stability, as well as issues that are important for a complete understating of neutrino emission from the sun. ***