Purpose With the advancements in technology, dental pedagogy has also evolved, and new learning technologies have emerged. Virtual reality (VR) as an education tool in dentistry is underutilised. VR as an adjunct in local anaesthesia (LA) teaching in paediatric dentistry has not been investigated. The study aimed to investigate dental student's perception of dental LA VR simulation on a paediatric patient and to determine whether this can improve students learning experience. Methods Seventy-one students participated in a self-administered questionnaire before and after the use of dental LA VR simulator. Descriptive analysis was performed to determine the perceptions of experience gained through VR. The data were tabulated, graphed, and analysed using SPSS and GraphPad Prism software. Results The study noted that 89.9% of participants perceived that it would improve their LA skills. After using dental LA VR, 83.1% of participants experienced more engaged in the learning activity, and 55.0% of participants agreed/strongly agreed that it improved their understanding of anatomical landmarks. Around 56.4% of participants agreed/strongly agreed that it added value compared with traditional LA teaching methods. Conclusion It can be concluded that the use of VR simulation can enhance students engagement and learning experience in paediatric dentistry settings and can be used as an additional means of LA training.

In recent years, the notion of electrical energy microgrids (MGs), in which communities share their locally generated power, has gained increasing interest. Typically, the energy generated comes from renewable resources, which means that its availability is variable, ie, sometimes there may be energy surpluses and at other times energy deficits. This energy variability can be ameliorated by trading energy with a connected electricity grid. However, since main electricity grids are subject to faults or other outages, it can be advantageous for energy MGs to form coalitions and share their energy among themselves. In this work, we present our model for the dynamic formation of such MG coalitions. In our model, MGs form coalitions on the basis of complementary weather patterns. Our agent‐based model, which is scalable and affords autonomy among the MGs participating in the coalition (agents can join and depart from coalitions at any time), features methods to reduce overall “discomfort” so that, even when all participating MGs in a coalition experience deficits, they can share energy so that their overall discomfort is reduced. We demonstrate the efficacy of our model by showing empirical studies conducted with real energy production and consumption data.

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