Radioprotection for Astronauts' Missions: Numerical Results on the Nomex Shielding Effectiveness.

Space missions with humans expose the crews to ionizing radiation, mainly due to the galactic cosmic radiation (GCR). All radiation protection programs in space aim to minimize crews' exposure to radiation. The radiation protection of astronauts can be achieved through the use of shields. The shields could serve as a suit to reduce GCR exposure and, in an emergency, as a radiation shelter to perform necessary interventions outside the space habitat in case of a solar proton event (SPE). A space radiation shielding that is suitable for exploration during space missions requires particular features and a proper knowledge of the radiation type. This study shows the results of numerical simulations performed with the Geant4 toolkit-based code DOSE. Calculations to evaluate the performance of Nomex, an aramidic fiber with high mechanical resistance, in terms of dose reduction to crews, were performed considering the interaction between protons with an energy spectrum ranging from 50 to 1100 MeV and a target slab of 20 g/cm2. This paper shows the properties of secondary products obtained as a result of the interaction between space radiation and a Nomex target and the properties of the secondary particles that come out the shield. The results of this study show that Nomex can be considered a good shield candidate material in terms of dose reductions. We also note that the secondary particles that provide the greatest contribution to the dose are protons, neutrons and, in a very small percentage, α-particles and Li ions.

Sampling and reconstruction schemes for biomagnetic sensor arrays.

In this paper we generalize the approach of Ahonen et al (1993 IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng. 40 859-69) to two-dimensional non-uniform sampling. The focus is on two main topics: (1) searching for the optimal sensor configuration on a planar measurement surface; and (2) reconstructing the magnetic field (a continuous function) from a discrete set of data points recorded with a finite number of sensors. A reconstruction formula for Bz is derived in the framework of the multidimensional Papoulis generalized sampling expansion (Papoulis A 1977 IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. 24 652-4, Cheung K F 1993 Advanced Topics in Shannon Sampling and Interpolation Theory (New York: Springer) pp 85-119) in a particular case. Application of these considerations to the design of biomagnetic sensor arrays is also discussed.