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Stem cells have the capacity to ensure the renewal of tissues and organs. They could be used in the future for a wide range of therapeutic purposes and are preserved at liquid nitrogen temperature to prevent any chemical or biological activity up to several decades before their use. We show that the cryogenized cells accumulate damages coming from natural radiations, potentially inducing DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Such DNA damage in stem cells could lead to either mortality of the cells upon thawing or a mutation diminishing the therapeutic potential of the treatment. Many studies show how stem cells react to different levels of radiation; the effect of terrestrial cosmic rays being key, it is thus also important to investigate the effect of the natural radiation on the cryopreserved stem cell behavior over time. Our study showed that the cryostored stem cells totally shielded from cosmic rays had less DSBs upon long-term storage. This could have important implications on the long-term cryostorage strategy and quality control of different cell banks.

Radioactive pollutants are naturally present in microelectronic device materials and can be an issue for the reliability of devices. The main concern is alpha emitters that produce high-energy particles (a few MeV) that ionize the semiconductor and then trigger soft errors. The question is to know what kinds of radionuclides are present in the device, their location in the device and the abundance of each species. In this paper we describe tools that are required to address the issue of radioactive pollutants in electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]