Publisher Health

The annual number of new HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) in England is likely to have fallen dramatically, from 2,770 in 2013 to 854 in 2018, showing elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 to be within reach — suggests work by researchers from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge and Public Health England (PHE), published in The Lancet HIV.
To manage the HIV epidemic among MSM in England, enhanced testing and earlier treatment strategies were scaled-up between 2011 and 2015 and supplemented from 2015 by pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). The researchers examined the effect of these interventions on the number of new infections and investigated whether the United Nations (UN) targets for HIV control and elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 might be within reach among MSM in England.
A complexity in this assessment is that HIV infections are not observed. Routine surveillance collects data on new HIV diagnoses, but trends in new diagnoses alone can be misleading as they can represent infections that occurred many years previously and depend on the testing behaviour of infected individuals.
To estimate new HIV infections among adult MSM (age 15 years and above) over a 10-year period between 2009 and 2018, the researchers used a novel statistical model that used data on HIV and AIDS diagnoses routinely collected via the national HIV and AIDS Reporting System in England, and knowledge on the progression of HIV. Estimated trends in new infections were then extrapolated to understand the likelihood of achieving the UN elimination target defined as less than one newly acquired infection per 10,000 MSM per year, by 2030.
The peak in the number of new HIV infections in MSM in England is estimated to have occurred between 2012 and 2013, followed by a steep decrease from 2,770 new infections in 2013 to 1,740 in 2015, and a further steadier decrease from 2016, down to 854. The decline was consistent across all age groups but was particularly marked in MSM aged 25-34 years, and slowest in those aged 45 years or older. Importantly, this decrease began before the widespread roll-out of PrEP in 2016, indicating the success of testing and treatment as infection prevention measures among MSM in England.
Through extrapolation, the researchers calculated a 40% likelihood of England reaching the UN elimination target by 2030 and identified relevant age-specific targeting of further prevention efforts (i.e., to MSM aged ≥45 years) to increase this likelihood.
Senior author, Professor Daniela De Angelis, Deputy Director of the MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“This is very good news and suggests that prevention measures adopted in England from 2011 have been effective. With the rollout of PrEP, England looks on course to meet the goal of zero transmissions by 2030. Our study also shows the value of regular estimation of HIV incidence to recognise and respond appropriately to changes in the current downward trend. The challenge now is to achieve these reductions in all groups at risk for HIV acquisition.”
Valerie Delpech, Head of National HIV Surveillance at Public Health England, said:
“We have made good progress towards ending HIV transmission by 2030 in England. Frequent HIV testing and the use of PrEP amongst people most at risk of HIV, together with prompt treatment among those diagnosed, are key to ending HIV transmission by 2030.
“You can benefit from life-saving HIV treatments if you are diagnosed with HIV and it also means you cannot pass the virus on.
“HIV and STI tests are still available through sexual health clinics during the COVID pandemic. Many clinics offer online testing throughout the year — people can order tests on clinic websites, take them in the privacy of their own home, return by post and receive results via text, phone call or post.”
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Materials provided by University of Cambridge. The original story is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Using a new 3D printing process, University of Nottingham researchers have discovered how to tailor-make artificial body parts and other medical devices with built-in functionality that offers better shape and durability, while cutting the risk of bacterial infection at the same time.
Study lead, Dr Yinfeng He, from the Centre for Additive Manufacturing, said: “Most mass-produced medical devices fail to completely meet the unique and complex needs of their users. Similarly, single-material 3D printing methods have design limitations that cannot produce a bespoke device with multiple biological or mechanical functions.
“But for the first time, using a computer-aided, multi-material 3D-print technique, we demonstrate it is possible to combine complex functions within one customised healthcare device to enhance patient wellbeing.”
The hope is that the innovative design process can be applied to 3D-print any medical device that needs customisable shapes and functions. For example, the method could be adapted to create a highly-bespoke one-piece prosthetic limb or joint to replace a lost finger or leg that can fit the patient perfectly to improve their comfort and the prosthetic’s durability; or to print customised pills containing multiple drugs — known as polypills — optimised to release into the body in a pre-designed therapeutic sequence.
Meanwhile, the aging population is increasing in the world, leading to a higher demand for medical devices in the future. Using this technique could improve the health and wellbeing of older people and ease the financial burden on the government.
How it works
For this study, the researchers applied a computer algorithm to design and manufacture — pixel by pixel — 3D-printed objects made up of two polymer materials of differing stiffness that also prevent the build-up of bacterial biofilm. By optimising the stiffness in this way, they successfully achieved custom-shaped and -sized parts that offer the required flexibility and strength.
Current artificial finger joint replacements, for example, use both silicone and metal parts that offer the wearer a standardised level of dexterity, while still being rigid enough to implant into bone. However, as a demonstrator for the study, the team were able to 3D-print a finger joint offering these dual requirements in one device, while also being able to customise its size and strength to meet individual patient requirements.
Excitingly, with an added level of design control, the team were able to perform their new style of 3D-printing with multi-materials that are intrinsically bacteria-resistant and bio-functional, allowing them to be implanted and combat infection (which can occur during and after surgery) without the use of added antibiotic drugs.
The team also used a new high-resolution characterisation technique (3D orbitSIMS) to 3D-map the chemistry of the print structures and to test the bonding between them throughout the part. This identified that — at very small scales — the two materials were intermingling at their interfaces; a sign of good bonding which means better device is less likely to break.
The study was carried out by the Centre for Additive Manufacturing (CfAM) and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The complete findings are published in Advanced Science, in a paper entitled: ‘Exploiting generative design for 3D printing of bacterial biofilm resistant composite devices’.
Prior to commercialising the technique, the researchers plan to broaden its potential uses by testing it on more advanced materials with extra functionalities such as controlling immune responses and promoting stem cell attachment.
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Inaccessible workplaces, normative departmental cultures and ‘ableist’ academic systems have all contributed to the continued underrepresentation and exclusion of disabled researchers in the Geosciences, according to an article published today (Thursday 8 June) in Nature Geosciences.
The article argues that changes to both working spaces and attitudes are urgently needed if institutions are to attract, safeguard and retain people with disabilities.
Anya Lawrence, a disabled early career researcher in the University of Birmingham’s School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Science and author of the piece says:
“Disabled geoscientists like myself face barrier after barrier on a daily basis just to get by in academia. My aim, in writing this article, was to capture some of the shared difficulties that disabled geoscientists experience, particularly struggles that may be less obvious or less apparent at a surficial level, but are significant nonetheless. For example, I think it may come as a surprise to some that traditional workplace cultures like communal coffee breaks can actually be a source of exclusion for those with disabilities. Likewise, ‘feeling sorry’ and showing pity for disabled colleagues could seem well-meaning but just serves to reinforce negative stereotypes towards disability.”
The article makes a series of suggestions about how those with disabilities can be attracted, supported and retained in academic geosciences such as university leaders taking advice from outside agencies with experience in embedding inclusion in the workplace, along with making visible commitments to disability-hiring initiatives.
Anya adds: “I think lots of examples of best practice are already out there in other sectors. It’s a case of whether people across the various different levels of the academic hierarchy from those in the highest leadership roles to the academics ‘on the ground’ and doing the research in Geoscience departments, are committed to creating respectful cultures and welcoming spaces for disabled scholars.”
“Although I have encountered many hurdles myself, I am very fortunate in that I have an amazingly supportive supervisor and head of school and also my parents who everyday face the challenge of caring for a disabled child with nothing but great courage and selflessness. I realise that so many disabled researchers just don’t have this kind of close support network and are quite isolated and alone in academia.”
Another potential initiative outlined in the article is increased collaborative research involving mixed groups of disabled and non-disabled geoscientists.
“Collaborating with other geoscientists without disabilities or with different disabilities to me has been really beneficial not only at a personal level but for the research itself,” says Anya. “By working with people who have different opinions, life experiences and areas of expertise from myself I have learnt so much; I have been prompted to try new methods and analytical techniques, publish my findings in outlets I hadn’t even heard of and think critically about my research at every stage of the process — all of which wouldn’t have been possible had I kept going it alone.”
“It’s also just nice to feel included and valued- working with people who appreciate my involvement and view disability as being different, not deficient, means the world to me. To this end I would like to thank the editors of Nature Geoscience, especially Dr James Super and Dr Simon Harold for being sensitive and deeply respectful in their communication and, most of all, for inviting someone with lived experience of disability to contribute to the discussion on disability in the geosciences!”
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Biomedical engineers at Duke University have demonstrated that a class of interwoven composite materials called semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (sIPNs) can be produced by living cells. The approach could make these versatile materials more biologically compatible for biomedical applications such as time-delayed drug delivery systems.
The research appears online on June 8 in the journal Nature Communications.
The concept of sIPNs has been around for more than 100 years and has been used in automotive parts, medical devices, molding compounds and engineering plastics. The general idea is for one or more polymers to assemble around another polymer scaffold in such a way that they become interlocked. Even though the polymers are not chemically bonded, they cannot be pulled apart and form a new material with properties greater than the simple sum of its parts.
Traditional methods for manufacturing sIPNs typically involve producing the constituent parts called monomers and mixing them together in the right chemical conditions to control their assembly into large networks in a process called polymerization.
“When it works, it’s a fantastic platform that can incorporate different functionalities into the self-assembled layer for biomedical or environmental applications,” said Lingchong You, professor of biomedical engineering at Duke. “But the process is often not as biocompatible as you might want. So we thought why not use living cells to synthesize the second layer to make it as biocompatible as possible?”
In the new paper, Zhuojun Dai, a former postdoc in the You lab who is now an associate professor at the Shenzhen Institute of Synthetic Biology, uses a platform that the lab has been developing for several years called “swarmbots” to do just that.

Research conducted at LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center of Excellence reports that Elovanoids, bioactive chemical messengers made from omega-3 very-long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids discovered by the Bazan lab in 2017, may block the virus that causes COVID-19 from entering cells and protect the air cells (alveoli) of the lung. Their findings are published online in Scientific Reports.
“Because the compounds are protective against damage in the brain and retina of the eye and the COVID-19 virus clearly damages the lung, the experiment tested if the compounds would also protect the lung,” notes Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Director of the LSU Health New Orleans Neuroscience Center and senior author of the paper.
The research team tested Elovanoids (ELVs) on infected lung tissue from a 78-year-old man in petri dish cultures. They found that ELVs not only reduced the ability of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to bind to receptors and enter cells, but they also triggered the production of protective, anti-inflammatory proteins that counteract lung damage.
The scientists report that ELVs decreased the production of ACE2. ACE2 is a protein on the surface of many cell types. ACE2 receptors act like locks on cells, and the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins act like keys that open the locks letting the virus enter cells to multiply rapidly. They also demonstrated for the first time that alveolar cells are endowed with pathways for the biosynthesis of ELVs.
“Since SARS-CoV-2 affects nasal mucosa, the GI tract, the eye, and the nervous system, uncovering the protective potential of ELVs expands the scope of our observations beyond the lung,” adds Dr. Bazan. “Our results provide a foundation for interventions to modify disease risk, progression, and protection of the lung from COVID-19 or other pathologies (including some types of pneumonia).”
The LSU Health New Orleans research team included Drs. Jorgelina M. Calandria, Surjyadipta Bhattacharjee, Marie-Audrey I. Kautzmann, Aram Asatryan, William C. Gordon, Khanh V. Do, Bokkyoo Jun, and Pranab K. Mukherjee, as well as Dr. Nicholas J. Maness from Tulane University and Dr. Nicos A. Petasis from the University of Southern California.
This work was supported by an Institutional Grant from the LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.
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Increasing evidence shows that physical activity and exercise training may delay or prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). In aging humans, aerobic exercise training increases gray and white matter volume, enhances blood flow, and improves memory function. The ability to measure the effects of exercise on systemic biomarkers associated with risk for AD and relating them to key metabolomic alterations may further prevention, monitoring, and treatment efforts. However, systemic biomarkers that can measure exercise effects on brain function and that link to relevant metabolic responses are lacking.
To address this issue, Henriette van Praag, Ph.D., from Florida Atlantic University’s Schmidt College of Medicine and Brain Institute and Ozioma Okonkwo, Ph.D., Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their collaborators, tested the hypotheses that three specific biomarkers, which are implicated in learning and memory, would increase in older adults following exercise training and correlate with cognition and metabolomics markers of brain health. They examined myokine Cathepsin B (CTSB), brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and klotho, as well as metabolomics, which have become increasingly utilized to understand biochemical pathways that may be affected by AD.
Researchers performed a metabolomics analysis in blood samples of 23 asymptomatic late middle-aged adults, with familial and genetic risk for AD (mean age 65 years old, 50 percent female) who participated in the “aeRobic Exercise And Cognitive Health (REACH) Pilot Study” (NCT02384993) at the University of Wisconsin. The participants were divided into two groups: usual physical activity (UPA) and enhanced physical activity (EPA). The EPA group underwent 26 weeks of supervised treadmill training. Blood samples for both groups were taken at baseline and after 26 weeks.
Results of the study, published in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology, showed that plasma CTSB levels were increased following this 26-week structured aerobic exercise training in older adults at risk for AD. Verbal learning and memory correlated positively with change in CTSB but was not related to BDNF or klotho. The present correlation between CTSB and verbal learning and memory suggests that CTSB may be useful as a marker for cognitive changes relevant to hippocampal function after exercise in a population at risk for dementia.
Plasma BDNF levels decreased in conjunction with metabolomic changes, including reductions in ceramides, sphingo- and phospholipids, as well as changes in gut microbiome metabolites and redox homeostasis. Indeed, multiple lipid metabolites relevant to AD were modified by exercise in a manner that may be neuroprotective. Serum klotho was unchanged but was associated with cardiorespiratory fitness.
“Our findings position CTSB, BDNF, and klotho as exercise biomarkers for evaluating the effect of lifestyle interventions on brain function,” said van Praag, corresponding author, an associate professor of biomedical science, FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine, and a member of the FAU Brain Institute and the FAU Institute for Human Health & Disease Intervention (I-HEALTH). “Human studies often utilize expensive and low throughput brain imaging analyses that are not practical for large population-wide studies. Systemic biomarkers that can measure the effect of exercise interventions on Alzheimer’s-related outcomes quickly and at low-cost could be used to inform disease progression and to develop novel therapeutic targets.”
CTSB, a lysosomal enzyme, is secreted from muscle into circulation after exercise and is associated with memory function and adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Older adults with cognitive impairment have lower serum and brain CTSB levels. BDNF is a protein that is upregulated in the rodent hippocampus and cortex by running and is important for adult neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and memory function. Klotho is a circulating protein that can enhance cognition and synaptic function and is associated with resilience to neurodegenerative disease, possibly by supporting brain structures responsible for memory and learning.
“The positive association between CTSB and cognition, and the substantial modulation of lipid metabolites implicated in dementia, support the beneficial effects of exercise training on brain function and brain health in asymptomatic individuals at risk for Alzheimer’s disease,” said van Praag.
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Materials provided by Florida Atlantic University. Original written by Gisele Galoustian. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced a rule on Thursday outlining steps that employers must take to protect workers from the risk of Covid-19, but it will apply only to the health care industry, not to other high-risk workplaces, as the Biden administration initially indicated.

Consider the menstrual cup.A repository for bodily fluid, it was first patented in 1867, a half-century before the commercial tampon arrived, and even a decade before the pad. A rubber model appeared in the 1930s, but its prevalence was curtailed by World War II, when rubber was in short supply. Enter the disposable tampon, which has dominated since.Now a team of design curators, health care practitioners and advocates want you to reconsider the menstrual cup, remove it from the still pink-hued feminine hygiene aisle, and look at it as an object, not of private utility, but of beauty. It sure beats a wad of cotton.An example of a menstrual cup held by Marilyn Rondon, an artist who modeled for four of the photographs in this article. She gave birth to her first baby in November.Natalia Mantini for The New York TimesDesigns vary, but in its most common iteration, it is bell-shaped and elegant, flexible, durable and washable. Its history is tied to fashion: the first commercial cup was devised by Leona W. Chalmers, a onetime Broadway star who created it because she wanted to wear her costumes of white silk without fear. Chalmers was ceaseless in championing her version for “modern women,” and, it seemed, she was far ahead of her time: the cup has recently proliferated, with sales gaining momentum. Tampax introduced its own version in 2018.“What makes it so beautiful also, it’s affordable, it’s environmentally conscious — it’s just one object that one needs, rather than a lifetime of buying pads and tampons to discard,” said Amber Winick, a design historian. Winick and Michelle Millar Fisher, a curator of contemporary decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, believe that the menstrual cup is museum-worthy, along with the breast pump, the speculum and the IUD — devices that normally are not valued for their aesthetics and are often culturally invisible.Their provocative new book and exhibition series, “Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births,” makes the case that there is a whole world of objects pertaining to women, mothers and pregnant people that have been overlooked from the perspective of form and function, and unstudied in terms of how their designs came to be.“Why,” the organizers write, have these artifacts “remained so hidden, even as they define the everyday existence of so many?”Natalia Mantini for The New York TimesIt is, in part, a problem of perspective and access, Millar Fisher added in an interview. “These objects are often used by people who have not had the power to write history, make decisions or frame material culture,” she said. “They have just not been part of the conversation, out loud, until recently.”“Designing Motherhood” begins with a small exhibition, which opened in Philadelphia in May at the Mütter Museum, a medical museum known for its collection of anatomical oddities. A larger exhibition is to open in September at the Center for Architecture and Design in Philadelphia. The pandemic meant the two exhibitions no longer ran concurrently, as originally planned, but the idea was always to blend audiences from science, medicine and design, organizers said. The duo worked with Juliana Rowen Barton, a curator and historian focused on the intersection of gender, race and design, and partnered with Maternity Care Coalition, a community nonprofit in Philadelphia that primarily helps low-income families, as they developed their project.Its cornerstone is a book, due in September from M.I.T. Press. In sections devoted to reproduction, pregnancy, birth and postpartum life, it winds through social and medical history, highlighting innovations, like a sleek new concept for the speculum, and inventions of necessity, like the Del-Em, a 1971 “menstruation extraction” device, still adapted for abortions today. Both are on view at the Mütter Museum.The activist Carol Downer, her cat and the Del-Em, a 1971 “menstruation extraction” device that she helped pioneer. A version is still used for abortions worldwide today.via Carol DownerThe authors also take on changing ideologies: one midwife they feature has done away with medical stirrups in her practice, for example, using guidance on how to examine people who are in wheelchairs or otherwise differently mobile. As it turns out, the gynecologist’s stirrup — used for the convenience of doctors, but for ages a shorthand for the discomfort of women on the exam table — need not be the standard.The female form is almost certainly one of the most visualized parts of art, and among the most represented in collections. Yet “museums neglecting designed objects that address the needs of women’s bodies is not an accident,” Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, said in an email. “Rather, it’s symptomatic of an historically male dominated curatorial and industrial design field; of a culture that prioritizes fantasy over biology; that privatizes birth; that commodifies women’s bodies. Design museums are in a unique position to illuminate social and historical inequities and advancements through product innovation, but still hesitate.”Lee Miller, a model and later photojournalist, photographed by Edward Steichen for a 1928 ad in McCall’s magazine.via the Museum of MenstruationRuth Schwartz Cowan, a historian and the author of “More Work for Mother: The Ironies Of Household Technology From the Open Hearth to the Microwave,” said that, while museums have come a long way from narrowly defining “women’s interests,” it is still rare to have items related to women’s bodies put on a pedestal. “There’s very little about sex and very little about reproduction — nobody wants to get involved in interpreting that stuff for the public, it’s just too hairy, and so they don’t do it,” she said. “‘Designing Motherhood,’” she said, “is a pathbreaking effort.”* * *Amid the body parts preserved in formaldehyde at the goth-y Mütter, the “Designing Motherhood” exhibition, which will remain on view for a year, stands out as bright and nearly hopeful, at least at first glance. There’s a chrome-plated breast pump and baby bottle, by the Philadelphia artist Aimee Gilmore, who wrote that after she gave birth, she considered them like trophies, “monuments to motherhood.”Clockwise from top: Several IUD contraceptives, including, at left, the Dalkon Shield, subject of a multibillion-dollar class-action settlement after thousands of women complained of infections; a 1970s battery-powered breast pump; the Egnell SMB breast pump from 1956; a glass nipple shield.Clockwise from top: Constance Mensh for The College of Physicians of Philadelphia; Lindsey Beal/Mütter Museum, Philadelphia; Bengt Backlund/Upplandsmuseet; Lindsey Beal/The Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western Reserve University, ClevelandThen there’s the gruesomely surgical — a reproduction of a Roman-era speculum that looks fit for torture — and the cutting-edge, like the 3-D-printed models of perineal tears (fabricated, for the kick of it, in hot pink). A case full of pessaries, to treat pelvic organ prolapse, answers the question of whether items that mend bodily trauma can also be beautiful. In rings and loops of brass, wood and steel, they may seem painful to put in, but they also look like modernist accessories that wouldn’t be out of place at the MoMA design store. (The modern exhibition design is by Helen Cahng of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.)Listening to the heartbeat of a fetus with a Pinard horn, a simple stethoscope. Allan GichigiThe subject matter draws visitors into personal revelations almost instantly. Here come the birth stories, the agonies endured in eras when women’s health was even more sidelined than it is today.Taking in the giant forceps, or the 18th-century pewter nipple shield that’s laced with lead, is squirm inducing. Reproductive design should be guided by safety, comfort and privacy, alongside efficacy — yet the Mütter display raises immediate questions about whose needs were prioritized. “The designed object can be about that conversation, but who gets to access it has always been asymmetrical — who in this country gets to feel safe, who gets to have comfort, who gets to have privacy?” Millar Fisher said.Even something as basic as a baby carrier highlights the ways in which our built environment is not meant for parents and children, Winick said. “It’s a design that, in other ways, helps us with the lack of design in other places, like subway stairs, that are so unfriendly to mothers,” she said.A woman carrying a baby in a rebozo in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2014.Alejandro Linares GarciaOnly by examining the secret lives of these objects, the curators argue, can we unpack the systems that produced them, and address the inequities within. Gabriella A. Nelson, the associate director of policy at Maternity Care Coalition, whose background is in city planning, said the project helped her see new connections between objects and their environments. Then, “my design thinking immediately goes to design of policy,” she said.Karen Pollack, executive vice president of programs and operations at the coalition, said the exhibition allowed her staff and clients — predominantly people of color — to see themselves, and their experiences, “reflected in the world of art and design.” It was a rare opportunity, she said. “Even when design is done for women, design is done for white women.”The hope is to change “what we hold to be of cultural worth and preservation in perpetuity, which is what museums are meant to do,” Millar Fisher said. “I really wish there weren’t so many Fabergé eggs on display, and I wish there were more breast pumps.”She lobbied, unsuccessfully, to get one of the original, hospital-grade, portable breast pumps — a chromed, curvilinear model from the ’50s, with Swedish engineering and American notions of labor-saving — accepted into exhibitions at institutions like the Museum of Modern Art or the Philadelphia Museum of Art, when she worked there. Her department, decorative arts, meant “luxury items,” she was told.Toasters, toothbrushes, children’s toys — all sorts of household items have earned a place in museum collections, but the breast pump, which inspires impassioned monologues from anyone who has ever used one, cataloging its (many) design flaws and features, was spurned.Millar Fisher eventually succeeded in having a breast pump displayed at the Art Institute of Chicago. But those initial no’s — mystifying and infuriating to her, especially from people who “had never lactated,” as she put it — fueled the work on “Designing Motherhood,” which she and Winick began conceptualizing in 2017, after meeting at a baby shower. (Winick has children; Millar Fisher and Barton, their co-curator, do not. They made sure their work grappled with the choices and cultural and medical history of being child-free.)* * *The project comes at a moment when the material needs of women and mothers are being recognized more, driven in part by the booming personal care marketplace and young, body-positive consumers, said Cunningham Cameron, of the Cooper Hewitt. A research-backed movement for culturally specific maternal care is growing (Erica Chidi, a doula and a founder of the reproductive wellness site Loom, wrote a prologue for the “Designing Motherhood” book).Parents whose bodily needs are different are also getting more attention. A designer in Sweden developed a prototype for an adaptive stroller for wheelchair users. A society for the blind in England posted the research and specs behind its tactile pregnancy test, to speed its manufacture.In response to the pandemic and recent social and political upheavals, museums including the Cooper Hewitt developed rapid collecting initiatives, to capture how design is responding to contemporary issues. “I think we will see more museums acquiring graphic and product designs that speak to women’s health — in part because of activist projects like ‘Designing Motherhood’” that share context through social platforms, Cunningham Cameron said.Natalia Mantini for The New York TimesAnd the entry of more women into fields like biomedical engineering, said Cowan, the science historian, has led to innovation in areas that were previously stagnant. The M.I.T. Media Lab held hackathons to improve the breast pump (“Make the Breast Pump Not Suck”), in 2014 and 2018, when there was also a policy summit around paid leave. (Because organizers realized that what was needed, as much as the redesign of a machine, was the overhaul of a system that forces parents of infants back to work.)One piece of reproduction-oriented design that has only recently begun to get its due (and is featured in the book) is the home pregnancy test. It was created in 1967 by Meg Crane, a graphic designer, who was then employed at a New Jersey pharmaceutical company, working on packaging for its makeup division. An encounter with a row of test tubes in the lab — pregnancy tests being done for doctors’ offices — and the gumption to believe that women should control that information themselves sent her home to sketch a new model. Her bosses at first refused to entertain her idea, then pitched it themselves, excluding her.But when she heard they were moving forward with prototypes, so did she. That December, she abandoned a holiday party in her West Village neighborhood, high-tailing it to her studio in a printer’s shop on Houston Street. “I went there and sat all night, on New Year’s Eve, just to get the final one worked out,” she said of her model, which was made from a clear paper-clip box, an eyedropper, and a slanted mirror that reflected the results.Though Crane said she thought more about function than form, the transparency of her design was part of what made it stand out, especially among the options created by men, full of poofs and frippery. She got the patent but was persuaded to sell the rights to her creation, called the Predictor, for $1, which the company never even paid, she said. It took a decade to get it to market in the United States, becoming one of the first medical diagnostics broadly available for home use. The Smithsonian bought one of her prototypes in 2015.Until then, the details of Crane’s invention were not widely known. She didn’t claim credit earlier, she said, partly because she felt that no one would believe a graphic designer was responsible for this medical device.Natalia Mantini for The New York TimesNow, though, design is front and center in the evolution of the pregnancy test. The latest iteration, called Lia, is the brainchild of a pair of women who met in a graduate program for product design at the University of Pennsylvania. Lia is the first entirely biodegradable (flushable) nonplastic pregnancy test. It was inspired, said Bethany Edwards, one of the creators, “by the idea of temporality.” Pregnancy tests are only used for a few minutes, but their materials last forever. “Your mother’s plastic pregnancy test is probably still in a landfill somewhere,” she said.Lia, which will be on view at the Center for Architecture and Design, is made of paper, and, unlike the plastic wands that have owned the market since the ’80s, has an hourglass shape and a soft, ribbed edge. It is intentionally pretty, instead of just utilitarian.Taking designs for mothers seriously depends in part upon their agency and visibility in public life. Some of the most eye-boggling images in the “Designing Motherhood” book are 19th-century tintypes known as “hidden mother” photos. For these pictures of children, the photographers had their family members hide, awkwardly, under fabric while they held the kids: a mound of dark cloth where a lap should be.A “hidden mother” photograph from the 19th century.Collection of Lee Marks and John C. DePrez Jr.,Shelbyville, IndianaIn the 21st century, invisible mothers are still an issue — so much so that hashtags have sprung up, thanks to mothers who realized they had reams of images of kids and co-parents in their feeds, but none of themselves. Now there’s #MomStaysInThePicture and #ProofOfMom — because, they say, whatever our state, we deserve to be seen.Surfacing is a column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick.

Moderna requested an emergency authorization on Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration for use of its coronavirus vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds. If authorized, as expected, the vaccine would offer a second option for protecting adolescents from the coronavirus, and hasten a return to normalcy for middle- and high-school students.The company has already filed for authorization with Health Canada and the European Medicines Agency, and plans to seek approval in other countries, the chief executive Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. Authorization by the F.D.A. typically takes three to four weeks.Last month, the F.D.A. expanded emergency use authorization for the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech for use in children ages 12 to 15 years. That vaccine was already available to anyone older than 16. About 7 million children under 18 have received at least one dose of the vaccine so far, and about 3.5 million are fully protected.Moderna’s vaccine was authorized for use in adults in December. Its application to the F.D.A. for young teens is based on study results reported last month. That clinical trial enrolled 3,732 children ages 12 to 17 years, with 2,500 receiving two doses of the vaccine and the remaining a saltwater placebo.The trial found no cases of symptomatic Covid-19 among fully vaccinated teens, which translates to an efficacy of 100 percent, the same figure that Pfizer and BioNTech reported for that age group. The trial also found that a single dose of the Moderna vaccine has an efficacy of 93 percent. Participants did not experience serious side effects beyond those seen in adults: pain at the site of the injection, headache, fatigue, muscle pain and chills.An independent safety monitoring committee will follow all participants for 12 months after their second injection to assess long-term protection and safety.