(1) Background: The popularity of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) has recently increased. Although they are less harmful than regular cigarettes, they still cause health consequences and their use for smoking cessation is inconclusive. The objective of this study was to evaluate patterns of use, knowledge about, and attitude towards e-cigarettes among youth in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) while also researching the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on smoking behavior. (2) Methods: An online cross-sectional survey was distributed across three major universities in the UAE (n = 240) between March and November 2021. Descriptive analysis, comparison across gender and nationality groups, and correlates between 30-day e-cigarette use and self-reported increases in nicotine consumption during the pandemic were studied. (3) Results: About 37% of students had used an e-cigarette in their lifetime, and 23% had smoked e-cigarettes in the past month. During the pandemic, 52% of university students self-reported no change in nicotine consumption, while only 17.5% had reported an increase. The current smoking of regular cigarettes, waterpipe, and medwakh increased the odds of having an increase in smoking during the pandemic by 5.3 times. (4) Conclusions: The findings inform about youth behavior and knowledge about vaping in the UAE and could also support the development of awareness interventions.

No abstract

In this paper, we present a 13.56 MHz energy harvester for arterial pressure measurement implants placed at deep distances in human bodies. A 50 µm diameter thin wire is used to fabricate a 150-turn solenoid coil around a PCB stripe with a cross-sectional area of 1.35×1 mm 2 . The solenoid has a length of 12 mm, low-frequency inductance of 4.75 µH, and series resistance of 8 Ω. With this coil and an 11-stage modified differential-drive rectifier, our harvester achieved 698 nW (−31.56 dBm) sensitivity for unloaded output voltage of 1.88 V and maximum receiver efficiency of >72% at −23.5 dBm available power using 0.0228 mm 2 silicon area in 180 nm technology. A transmission distance of 21 cm was reached under compliance with the field exposure levels set by the IEEE Std. C95.1-2019.