The study of astroparticles and research in cancer therapy are the focus of two specific agreements signed on March 7 in Buenos Aires by Adriana Cristina Serquis, president of CNEA, the Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, and Antonio Zoccoli, president of INFN.
Namely, one of the two agreements concerns several experimental projects developed in Argentina and in which INFN is a partner dedicated to cosmic ray research and cosmology studies: the Pierre Auger Observatory, deployed on the Pampas, which studies high-energy cosmic ray showers; the QUBIC project, inaugurated last year and operating at high altitude in the Salta province dedicated to the study of cosmic background radiation; and the Andes project for the construction of an underground laboratory in the Andes. The second agreement concerns applications for medicine from technologies and methods born within basic physics, specifically the agreement covers research and development activities in the field of cancer therapy, both for BNCT (boron neutron capture therapy) and for radiotherapy with charged particle beams.