Abstract: Modeling cosmic-ray-induced particle fluxes in the atmosphere is very important for developing many applications in aeronautics, space weather and on ground experimental arrangements. There is a lack of measurements and modeling at flight altitude and on ground in the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly. In this work we have developed an application based on the Geant4 toolkit called gPartAt that is aimed at the analysis of extensive air shower particle spectra. Another application has been developed using the MCNPX code with the same approach in order to evaluate the models and nuclear data libraries used in each application. Moreover, measurements were performed to determine the ambient dose equivalent rate of neutrons at flight altitude in different regions and dates in the Brazilian airspace; these results were also compared with the simulations. The results from simulations of the neutron spectra at ground level were also compared to data from a neutron spectrometer in operation since February 2015 at the Pico dos Dias Observatory in Brazil, at 1864m above sea level, as part of a collaboration between the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEAv) and the French Aerospace Lab (ONERA). This measuring station is being operated with support from the National Astrophysics Laboratory (LNA). The modeling approaches were also compared to the AtmoRad computational platform, QARM, EXPACS codes and with measurements of the neutron spectrum taken in 2009 at the Pico dos Dias Observatory.

Abstract: Although mitochondrial DNA has been widely used in phylogeography, evidence has emerged that factors such as climate, food availability, and environmental pressures that produce high levels of stress can exert a strong influence on mitochondrial genomes, to the point of promoting the persistence of certain genotypes in order to compensate for the metabolic requirements of the local environment. As recently discovered, the gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) comprise four highly divergent lineages across their distribution spanning the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions. Gentoo penguins therefore represent a suitable animal model to study adaptive processes across divergent environments. Based on 62 mitogenomes that we obtained from nine locations spanning all four gentoo penguin lineages, we demonstrated lineage-specific nucleotide substitutions for various genes, but only lineage-specific amino acid replacements for the ND1 and ND5 protein-coding genes. Purifying selection (dN/dS??1) was mostly present in codons of the Complex I (NADH genes), supported by two different codon-based methods at the ND1 and ND4 in the most divergent lineages, the eastern gentoo penguin from Crozet and Marion Islands and the southern gentoo penguin from Antarctica respectively. Additionally, ND5 and ATP6 were under selection in the branches of the phylogeny involving all gentoo penguins except the eastern lineage. Our study suggests that local adaptation of gentoo penguins has emerged as a response to environmental variability promoting the fixation of mitochondrial haplotypes in a non-random manner. Mitogenome adaptation is thus likely to have been associated with gentoo penguin diversification across the Southern Ocean and to have promoted their survival in extreme environments such as Antarctica. Such selective processes on the mitochondrial genome may also be responsible for the discordance detected between nuclear- and mitochondrial-based phylogenies of gentoo penguin lineages.