Biosphere Project

The month of May 2024 was characterized by solar energetic particles events directed towards the Earth, especially the big event causing a strong terrestrial geomagnetic storm during the night from 10 to 11 May 2024, with auroras observed everywhere in Europe. This was the strongest storm for the last 20 years with a Disturbed Storm Time index Dst...

We use the full NASA Van Allen Probes mission (2012-2019) to extract the electron plasma density from the Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS) and Electric Field and Waves (EFW) instruments and discuss the evolution of the plasmasphere. We generate new statistics including mean and standard deviations of the...

We performed detailed measurements of the secondary cosmic ray field in the lower atmosphere. We use a miniaturized particle telescope consisting of two Timepix3 detectors operated synchronized stacked in closed configuration. Spectral- and time-sensitive particle tracking provides enhanced particle-type resolving power and high angular resolution...

Microarray experiments, a mainstay in gene expression analysis for nearly two decades, pose challenges due to their complexity. To address this, we introduce DExplore, a user-friendly web application enabling researchers to detect differentially expressed genes using data from NCBI's GEO. Developed with R, Shiny, and Bioconductor, DExplore integrat...

Based on the need for radiobiological databases, in this work, we mined experimental ionizing radiation data of human cells treated with X-rays, γ-rays, carbon ions, protons and α-particles, by manually searching the relevant literature in PubMed from 1980 until 2024. In order to calculate normal and tumor cell survival α and β coefficients of the...

Quasi-thermal noise (QTN) spectroscopy is a valuable method to deduce important parameters in space plasma, such as plasma density and temperature, especially when direct particle measurements are not available. The present study develops a new fitting method to fit the QTN spectra observed by the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) with a comprehensive theor...

Develop metrological methodologies to establish the correlations between cosmic rays, solar UV radiation, ozone layer thickness and anthropogenic activities. • Establish a database of absolute ionization, excitation, and dissociation cross sections as a function of electron impact energy and projectile energy loss for natural atmospheric and anthro...

The increasing atmospheric ionisation caused by extra-terrestrial radiation (cosmic rays and solar UV radiation) boosted by anthropogenic emissions can significantly affect the Earth biosphere by depleting the ozone layer. This leads to an increase of the biologically active UV radiation flux, with significant implication for human health, plants a...

Ionizing radiation can induce different types of DNA lesions, leading to genomic instability and ultimately cell death. Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, a major modality in cancer treatment, harnesses the genotoxic potential of radiation to target and destroy cancer cells. Nevertheless, cancer cells have the capacity to develop resistance to radi...

During a few solar energetic particle (SEP) events, solar protons were trapped within the geomagnetic field and reached the outer edge of the inner radiation belt. We reproduced this phenomenon by modeling the proton flux distribution at the Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) for different geomagnetic conditions during solar particle events. We developed a thre...

When high-energy particles originating from space penetrate the atmosphere, they may interact with atoms and molecules, initiating air showers composed of secondary and tertiary particles propagating towards the ground. They can cause ionization of the atmosphere and contribute to the radiation dose at low altitudes. This work uses the GEANT-4-base...

Plasmasphere plays an important role in the magnetospheric physics, defining many important inputs to the ionosphere from the middle to the auroral latitudes. Among them are electron thermal heat fluxes resulting from the Coulomb interaction of superthermal electrons (SE) and cold plasmaspheric electrons. These fluxes define the electron temperatur...

In the present work, the kinetic exospheric model of the solar wind is improved by considering regularized Kappa distributions that have no diverging moments through consideration of a cutoff at relativistic velocities. The model becomes valid even for kappa indices lower than 2, which is important since low values of kappa are observed in the fast...

Relativistic radiation belt electron observations from the Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) on board the PROBA-V (Project for On-Board Autonomy and Vegetation) satellite are compared to those performed by the Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS) on board the Van Allen Probes formerly known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP). Despite...

We introduce for the first time the PROBA-V/EPT electron flux data to train a deep learning data-driven model with the purpose of investigating the Earth’s radiation belts dynamics. The Long-Short Term Memory Neural Network is employed to predict the electron fluxes between 1 and 8 Earth Radius (RE) along a Low Earth Orbit. Different combinations o...

The analysis of the proton flux variations observed by the Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) at energies >9.5 MeV from the launch of PROBA-V satellite on 7 May 2013 up to October 2022 shows an anti-correlation between the proton fluxes and the solar phase. At solar minimum, the fluxes are higher at low L corresponding to the northern border of the...

Combined theoretical and experimental studies on the elastic scattering of electrons on ethanol were performed in the energy range of 30-800 eV. The differential elastic electron scattering cross sections (DCS) of ethanol were measured for scattering angles of 30°to 150°using the relative flow technique and nitrogen (N2) as the reference gas. From...

This review focusses strictly on existing plasma density models, including ionospheric source models, empirical density models, physics-based and machine-learning density models. This review is framed in the context of radiation belt physics and space weather codes. The review is limited to the most commonly used models or to models recently develo...

Modeling ionizing radiation interaction with biological matter is a major scientific challenge, especially for protons that are nowadays widely used in cancer treatment. That presupposes a sound understanding of the mechanisms that take place from the early events of the induction of DNA damage. Herein, we present results of irradiation-induced com...

Ionizing radiation (IR) is a genuine genotoxic agent and a major modality in cancer treat- ment. IR disrupts DNA sequences and exerts mutagenic and/or cytotoxic properties that not only alter critical cellular functions but also impact tissues proximal and distal to the irradiated site. Unveiling the molecular events governing the diverse effects o...

The electron fluxes in the outer radiation belt during and after the intense geomagnetic storm of June 23, 2015, are investigated both at polar low earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). We use the Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) instrument on board the European Space Agency PROBA-V satellite at LEO at 820 km of altitude and c...