## Special Issue on Advances in Environmental Applied Physics
### [PERSON] (c)
As a result of measurements in the East Antarctica region covering a wide range of altitudes (from 30 m to 3762 m), as well as comparisons with the model calculations performed with an analytical model based on comprehensive Monte Carlo simulations (PARMA), it was demonstrated that the portable neutron-monitoring system could be effectively applied to the periodic verification of cosmic neutron intensities that would improve the reliability of related studies [4; 5]. In the research paper titled \"Multivariate Statistical Analyses and Potentially Toxic Elements Pollution Assessment of Pyroclastic Products from Mt. Etna, Sicily, Southern Italy\", potentially toxic element contamination, which represents a universal problem of major concern, due to several adverse health effects on human beings when permissible concentration levels are overcome, was investigated. In this sense, the assessment of potentially risky elements' contents in different environmental matrices plays a key role in the safeguarding of the quality of the environment, and thus of strictly correlated public health. In this article, measurements of the average potentially toxic element concentrations in pyroclastic products from Mt. Etna, Eastern Sicily, and Southern Italy were performed together with a comparison with the allowable levels set by Italian legislation, with the aim of evaluating the level of toxicity imposed on the ecosystem. For this purpose, inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) measurements were performed to investigate any possible chemical pollution by potentially risky elements, via the application of different indices such as the enrichment factor (EF), the geo-accumulation index (I\({}_{\text{geo}}\)), the contamination factor (CF), and the pollution load index (PLI). Finally, a multivariate statistical analysis was performed by processing potentially toxic element contents and pollution indices. It is worth noting that the approach used could be applied, in principle, to the evaluation of chemical risk due to the presence of potentially toxic elements in a large variety of samples of particular environmental interest, and can constitute a guideline for investigations focused on the monitoring of environmental quality [6; 7; 8]. In the article \"Estimation of Cosmic-Ray-Induced Atmospheric Ionization and Radiation at Commercial Aviation Flight Altitudes\", the main source of the ionization of the Earth's atmosphere, i.e., the cosmic radiation that depends on solar activity as well as geomagnetic activity, was investigated. Galactic cosmic rays constitute a permanent radiation background and contribute significantly to the radiation exposure inside the atmosphere. In this work, the cosmic-ray-induced ionization of the Earth's atmosphere, due to both solar and galactic cosmic radiation during the recent solar cycles, 23 (1996-2008) and 24 (2008-2019), was studied globally. Estimations of the ionization were based on the CRAC-CRII model produced by the University of Oulu. The use of this model allowed for extensive calculations from the Earth's surface (atmospheric depth of 1033 g/cm\({}^{2}\)) to the upper limit of the atmosphere (atmospheric depth of 0 g/cm\({}^{2}\)). Monte Carlo simulations were performed for the estimation quantities of radiobiological interest with the validated software DYNASTIMA/DYASTIMA-R. This study was focused on specific altitudes of interest, such as the common flight levels used in commercial aviation [9; 10]. The main topic of the article titled \"Natural and Anthropogenic Radioactivity Content and Radiation Hazard Assessment of Baby Food Consumption in Italy\" is the natural (\({}^{40}\)K) and anthropogenic (\({}^{137}\)Cs) radioactivity concentration in four different typologies of early childhood (up to two years old) foods, i.e., homogenized fruit, homogenized meat, childhood biscuits, and baby pasta, produced in Italy and sold in Italian large retailers, investigated via high-purity germanium (HPGe) gamma spectrometry.