Impact of Protracted War Crisis on Dental Students: A Comparative Multicountry Cross-sectional Study

BACKGROUND: The impact of conflict and war crisis on dental students is poorly understood. Given the prolonged conflicts and political instability in the Arabic-speaking countries, it is crucial to investigate the effect of these conditions on dental students. This study aimed to assess the impact of protracted war on dental students by comparing the personal, university, and wider context challenges they face across war-affected and unaffected countries. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted including a convenience sample of dental students from 13 universities in 12 Arabic-speaking countries. Respondents were those at entry and exit points of their undergraduate dental training. A self-administered paper questionnaire collected anonymized data on sociodemographics, and personal, university, and wider context challenges that students were facing. Multivariable Poisson regression analyses were carried out. RESULTS: The overall response rate was 64.8%. The mean age was 21.2 (standard deviation = 2.1) years, with 68% of participants being female. After adjusting for age and sex, dental students in Arabic-speaking countries affected by protracted war crisis were significantly more likely to report wider context challenges compared to their counterparts in unaffected countries (n = 2448; beta = 1.12; 95% confidence interval: 1.10-1.13; P < 0.001). DISCUSSION: Dental students in Arabic-speaking countries affected by protracted war crisis were more likely to suffer from wider context challenges such as difficulties in attendance due to the deterioration of security and lack of flexibility of teaching time to accommodate the different circumstances induced by the war crisis. Supporting dental students in areas affected by protracted war crises is needed and may include developing online dental education programs

Microwave Measurements on YBaCuO Thin Films and Realisation of Microwave Superconducting Devices

Two characterisations methods in microwaves are presented. They permit to obtain σ*, Rs and λ for a HTS film without the need of any theoretical model for the superconductivity. The best film tested exhibits at 35GHz and 78K a Rs value of 10mΩ, at least three times lower than the copper one. A quasi-integrated oscillator has been realised on a 1cm2 area : it oscillates at 12GHz and close to liquid nitrogen temperature. At lower temperatures an output power of +3dBm and a phase noise of -100dBc/Hz at 100kHz from the carrier have been recorded

Degradation assessment of LYRA after 5 years on orbit : Technology Demonstration

International audienceWe present a long-term assessment of the radiometric calibration and degradation of the Large Yield Radiometer (LYRA), which has been on orbit since 2009. LYRA is an ultraviolet (UV) solar radiometer and is the first space experiment using aboard a pioneering diamond detector technology. We show that LYRA has degraded after the commissioning phase but is still exploitable scientifically after almost 5 years on orbit thanks to its redundancy design and calibration strategy correcting for instrument degradation. We focus on the inflight detector’s calibration and show that diamond photodetectors have not degraded while silicon reference photodiodes that are even less exposed to the Sun show an increase of their dark current and a decrease of their photoresponse