After more than two and a half decades of radioactive beam physics, the existence of nuclear halos remains as probably the most outstanding discovery in the field. Many measurements have been performed with light halo systems, especially with a 6 He projectile, which has a two-neutron halo. The total reaction cross sections that can be extracted from these measurements follow a systematic trend that can be compared to the behavior of the respective core, in this case 4 He. By using an appropriate scaling for energies and cross sections, such comparison clearly shows the effects of the halo, which can be separated into static and dynamic effects. For a few systems, where the reactions of the halo have been explicitly measured, application of the same scaling criteria leads to the conclusion of a core-halo decoupling. The behavior of the proton-halo projectile 8 B is similar to that of 6 He insofar as total reaction cross sections are concerned. The measured fusion data for 8 B + 58 Ni, however, show a remarkable size effect of the halo which has no equivalent in the corresponding data for neutron-halo projectiles.
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