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To determine the psychological and behavioural effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on a Canadian cohort of individuals during pregnancy and the postpartum period.

Repair increases the longevity of restorations and is well-accepted by patients. In this study, the authors assessed the acceptance of dental restoration repair by dentists and determined the main variables of repair versus replacement of defective restorations.

We demonstrate a bench-scale prototype of a photoacoustic (PA) methane gas analyser that takes advantage of an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) based on a fan-out MgO : PPLN structure and resonant differential PA detector. The OPO emits in a repetitively pulsed mode (?1750 Hz) at an idler wavelength of ?3.3 ?m with an average power of ?40 - 50 mW. Using the prototype laser PA gas analyser, we experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of measuring the background methane concentration in air (?2 - 3 ppm of CH4). The threshold sensitivity of the PA gas analyser (1?) is determined to be ? 49 ppb of CH4.

In this work, we discovered the possibility of greatly relaxing requirements to the speed and dynamic range of pump power variation and, thus, of reducing synchronous pumping of ytterbium (Yb)-based fiber lasers to a very simple pump modulation yielding a mode-locked pulsed output. We show that even slow (microsecond-scale) low-index (≤0.5) sine-wave synchronous modulation of the pump power can result in shaping of a regular train of nanosecond laser pulses. It is revealed that the energy-conservative process of laser pulse shortening against the pump modulation period can take place in the quasi–two-level laser active medium owing to mistiming-induced gain discrimination of the temporal laser pulse profile. Thus, nanosecond pulses with energy up to 50 nJ were obtained in our experimental all-fiber Yb-based laser configuration. Our theoretical modeling reveals routes to much stronger pulse shortening through tunable pump modulation parameters. This discovery allows the establishment of more reliable and easy-to-implement high-efficiency alternatives to other types of high-energy ultralong mode-locked fiber lasers.

The pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) highlights the importance of rapid and sensitive diagnostics of viral infection that enables the efficient tracing of cases and the implementation of public health measures for disease containment. The immediate actions from both academia and industry have led to the development of many COVID-19 diagnostic systems that have secured fast-track regulatory approvals and have been serving our healthcare frontlines since the early stage of the pandemic. On diagnostic technologies, many of these clinically validated systems have significantly benefited from the recent advances in micro- and nanotechnologies in terms of platform design, analytical method, and system integration and miniaturization. The continued development of new diagnostic platforms integrating micro- and nanocomponents will address some of the shortcomings we have witnessed in the existing COVID-19 diagnostic systems. This Perspective reviews the previous and ongoing research efforts on developing integrated micro- and nanosystems for nucleic acid-based virus detection, and highlights promising technologies that could provide better solutions for the diagnosis of COVID-19 and other viral infectious diseases. With the summary and outlook of this rapidly evolving research field, we hope to inspire more research and development activities to better prepare our society for future public health crises.