Latest news with #Delft
News.com.au
14-07-2025
- Health
- News.com.au
Researchers redesign vaginal speculum to ease fear and pain
It is cold, hard, metallic and commonly associated with pain. Not a mediaeval torture instrument, but the vaginal speculum used every day around the world for essential gynaecological exams. Two engineers at Delft University in the Netherlands are now rethinking the decades-old design of the speculum -- long dreaded by many patients -- to make it less intimidating and less painful. "I have a lot of experience with the vaginal speculum, unfortunately," Tamara Hoveling, one of the researchers behind the project, told AFP. "I've never seen it as a pleasurable experience and I've always wondered why it looks like this." - Sombre history - The PhD candidate in medical industrial design then delved into the dark history behind the creation of the speculum, one version of which was developed by United States doctor James Marion Sims 180 years ago. It was "tested on enslaved women without permission", said the 29-year-old. "So that motivated me even more to take on this project." Hoveling teamed up with Ariadna Izcara Gual, who was then working on her master's in industrial design engineering at Delft. "As I was doing a lot of interviews, I was doing those sort of sketches with the same sort of shape but people were still scared of the device", said the 28-year-old Spanish researcher. The Cusco speculum, the most commonly used model, is a metal device with a handle, beak and screw to adjust how wide it opens once inside the vagina. For many, its insertion is uncomfortable or even painful and causes anxiety. "When you get scared, your muscles clamp together and that makes it even harder to relax. "Then the speculum is opened, pushing against these tense muscles and making it even more painful," Hoveling said. "So I tried to look for shapes that might be related to the reproductive organs, like for example the flower, that also opens." - Patient-friendly design - The result was a prototype called the Lilium -- named after the lily flower. Like the more familiar tampon, it has soft plastic and an applicator. "It's designed with the patient in mind rather than the doctor. "And we're really trying to improve the comfort aspect in a sensitive spot." The Lilium also meets doctors' needs. Its three-sided opening keeps the vaginal walls from collapsing, allowing better visibility during examinations. The Lilium remains at an early stage, with further ergonomic testing and material research needed to refine the prototype. The researchers must still secure safety certifications, run human trials and obtain regulatory approval before it can reach clinics. - Dazzling success - To fund the next phase, they launched a crowdfunding campaign that quickly drew media attention in the Netherlands. Within just two days, the campaign raised 100,000 euros ($117,000) -- far surpassing expectations. "It's also a sign. It's proof there are people who really want change, that there is a real problem here and that the current market solutions are not the best," Hoveling said. "I've received a lot of emails from women who told me they actually don't go to the gynaecologist because of this device, because they're scared, because they have a traumatic experience." Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women, according to the World Health Organization. It can be detected via a smear test or HPV screening -- both performed using a speculum. With funding to allow this new gynaecological tool to be developed properly, the Lilium could be saving lives within five years.
France 24
14-07-2025
- Health
- France 24
Researchers redesign vaginal speculum to ease fear and pain
Two engineers at Delft University in the Netherlands are now rethinking the decades-old design of the speculum -- long dreaded by many patients -- to make it less intimidating and less painful. "I have a lot of experience with the vaginal speculum, unfortunately," Tamara Hoveling, one of the researchers behind the project, told AFP. "I've never seen it as a pleasurable experience and I've always wondered why it looks like this." Sombre history The PhD candidate in medical industrial design then delved into the dark history behind the creation of the speculum, one version of which was developed by United States doctor James Marion Sims 180 years ago. It was "tested on enslaved women without permission", said the 29-year-old. "So that motivated me even more to take on this project." Hoveling teamed up with Ariadna Izcara Gual, who was then working on her master's in industrial design engineering at Delft. "As I was doing a lot of interviews, I was doing those sort of sketches with the same sort of shape but people were still scared of the device", said the 28-year-old Spanish researcher. The Cusco speculum, the most commonly used model, is a metal device with a handle, beak and screw to adjust how wide it opens once inside the vagina. For many, its insertion is uncomfortable or even painful and causes anxiety. "Then the speculum is opened, pushing against these tense muscles and making it even more painful," Hoveling said. "So I tried to look for shapes that might be related to the reproductive organs, like for example the flower, that also opens." Patient-friendly design The result was a prototype called the Lilium -- named after the lily flower. Like the more familiar tampon, it has soft plastic and an applicator. "It's designed with the patient in mind rather than the doctor. "And we're really trying to improve the comfort aspect in a sensitive spot." The Lilium also meets doctors' needs. Its three-sided opening keeps the vaginal walls from collapsing, allowing better visibility during examinations. The Lilium remains at an early stage, with further ergonomic testing and material research needed to refine the prototype. The researchers must still secure safety certifications, run human trials and obtain regulatory approval before it can reach clinics. - Dazzling success - To fund the next phase, they launched a crowdfunding campaign that quickly drew media attention in the Netherlands. Within just two days, the campaign raised 100,000 euros ($117,000) -- far surpassing expectations. "It's also a sign. It's proof there are people who really want change, that there is a real problem here and that the current market solutions are not the best," Hoveling said. "I've received a lot of emails from women who told me they actually don't go to the gynaecologist because of this device, because they're scared, because they have a traumatic experience." Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women, according to the World Health Organization. It can be detected via a smear test or HPV screening -- both performed using a speculum. With funding to allow this new gynaecological tool to be developed properly, the Lilium could be saving lives within five years.
Observer
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Observer
Jonathan Anderson Sets a New Dressing Agenda at Dior
A photo of Christian Dior's original salon stretched the width of the Invalides, the gold-domed palace where Napoleon is buried, offering a fish-eye view of the past to the throngs shrieking outside — and a sign of just where Dior believes it belongs in the pantheon of French power. Inside, dove-gray velvet lined the walls of a temporary event space and displayed two rare 18th-century oils by Jean Siméon Chardin on loan from the National Galleries of Scotland and the Louvre. Robert Pattinson gossiped with Josh O'Connor. Donatella Versace schmoozed with Roger Federer. A pregnant Rihanna arrived with A$AP Rocky a mere 45 minutes after the official start time. That's how much anticipation there was for the Dior men's show. Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino was even trailing around to document the moment. It was Jonathan Anderson's debut as the creative director/savior of the house, the first designer to be put in charge of both menswear and womenswear. And under all the buzz, a giant question mark hovered: Could the former Loewe wunderkind reignite excitement not just in the brand but in fashion? Anderson made it look easy. Literally. Beginning with his take on the Bar jacket, the most famous Dior womenswear shape — the one that prompted Harper's Bazaar editor Carmel Snow to jump out of her seat shrieking, 'It's a New Look!' in 1947. It was reimagined in a Donegal tweed with a flat back and a whiff of the hourglass at the front, as if it retained a vague memory of what it once was. With it, he paired not a shirt but a stiff white stock collar and a pair of oversize white cotton cargo shorts, each side sporting elaborate folds to create the plumped out silhouette of a goose, or a 1948 couture dress called the Delft. Go on, shake your tail feathers. If little Lord Fauntleroy had spent a year at the University of Southern California and then returned for a pickup game of basketball at Versailles, this is how he might dress. It was not a capital N New Look. It wasn't that radical, or shocking. But it was an awfully charming newish one. And it was situated smack in the middle of the tension between formality and informality, menswear and womenswear, commerce and creativity (Anderson's own work at Loewe and Uniqlo and what he inherited at Dior), which seems to define this particular moment. Jonathan Andersons take on the Bar jacket, Diors most famous womens wear shape, is paired with cargo shorts at the Dior spring 2026 fashion show in Milan in June 2025. (Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times) No one is all one thing or another. Neither are their clothes. Neither are the totems of wealth. What Anderson proposed was a clear and convincing argument that contradictions can gracefully coexist. Most of all, he put forward the belief that fashion and wearability are not irreconcilable ideas — that you either have to look bizarro or look boring. For every highfalutin garment there was an equal and opposite this-old-thing, usually worn together. Velvet frock coats were paired with faded jeans in Japanese denim. Olive green puffer coats and down vests were cut with trapeze backs. The exact pattern of another classic Dior dress, the Caprice, with its elaborately swathed peplum skirt, was applied to a pair of loose khakis, giving one leg the fillip of a drape. An 18th-century frock coat was exactingly reproduced — in moleskin. There were shamrocks on tennis shoes and high-tops with driving shoe soles; cable knits under elaborate waist coats. There was a lot of neck action. Book totes borrowed, again, from the women's line, with actual book titles on them from Baudelaire and Françoise Sagan. Anderson had clearly done his homework. Easter eggs to early Dior were everywhere. Even the labels inside the clothes were in the designer's preferred silk faille. He was never going to toss everything out the window and start again. He couldn't. Dior is a multibillion-dollar business, after all, and some of his predecessors (Raf Simons, Hedi Slimane, John Galliano) were his idols. Once upon a time, a designer might have had the arrogance to wipe the slate clean, but this is a new age. The industry is in crisis, and the creative tectonic plates are shifting. It is why Anderson invited seemingly every other designer in Paris to join him at the show. It is also why he picked the Chardin oils and why he seeded his Instagram with Warhol Polaroids of Lee Radziwill and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Chardin, he said in a preview, 'kind of loosened up the still life'; Warhol made pop culture high art. Both crystallized an inflection point in culture. Anderson clearly wants his Dior to do the same. His show invitation came borne on a china plate with three china eggs on top, as if a reminder that the menswear was just the beginning (and maybe to acknowledge that some shells may get broken along the way). Fair enough. The result may not knock you sideways, but it's likely to make you sit up and buy. Not to mention whetting the appetite for his first womenswear collection, come September.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Quantum twist: In a first, magnet-free spin transport achieved in graphene
A team of researchers has managed to generate and detect spin currents in graphene without using any external magnetic fields for the very first time, successfully addressing a long-standing challenge in physics. The development could play an important role in the evolution of next-generation quantum devices. Special spin currents are a key ingredient in spintronics, a new kind of technology that uses the spin of electrons, instead of electric charge, to carry information. Spintronics promises ultrafast, super energy-efficient devices than today's electronics, but making it work in practical materials like graphene has been difficult. "In particular, the detection of quantum spin currents in graphene has always required large magnetic fields that are practically impossible to integrate on-chip," said Talieh Ghiasi, lead researcher and a postdoc fellow at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in Netherlands. However, in their latest study, Ghiasi and his team have now shown that by placing graphene on a carefully chosen magnetic material, they can trigger and control quantum spin currents without magnets. This discovery could pave the way for ultrathin, spin-based circuits and help bridge the gap between electronics and future quantum technologies. To understand what makes this research special, it's pertinent to know that the team was trying to create the quantum spin Hall (QSH) effect. This is a special state where electrons move only along the edges of a material, and their spins point in the same direction. The motion is smooth and doesn't get scattered by tiny imperfections, a dream scenario for making efficient, low-power circuits. However, until now, making graphene show this effect required applying strong magnetic fields. Instead of forcing graphene to behave differently with magnets, the researchers took a different approach. They placed a sheet of graphene on top of a layered magnetic material called chromium thiophosphate (CrPS₄). This material naturally influences nearby electrons through what scientists call magnetic proximity effects. When graphene is stacked on CrPS₄, its electrons start to feel two key forces; spin-orbit coupling (which ties an electron's motion to its spin) and exchange interaction (which favors certain spin directions). These forces open up an energy gap in graphene's structure and lead to the appearance of edge-conducting states, which is a sign of the QSH effect. The researchers confirmed that spin currents were flowing along the graphene's edges and stayed stable across distances of tens of micrometers, even in the presence of small defects. They also noticed something unexpected, an anomalous Hall (AH) effect, where electrons are deflected to the side even without an external magnetic field. Unlike the QSH effect, which they observed at low (cryogenic) temperatures, this anomalous behavior persisted even at room temperature. "The detection of the QSH states at zero external magnetic field, together with the AH signal that persists up to room temperature, opens the route for practical applications of magnetic graphene in quantum spintronic circuitries," the study authors note. The stable, topologically protected spin currents could be used to transmit quantum information over longer distances, possibly connecting qubits in future quantum computers. They also open the door to ultrathin memory and logic circuits that run cooler and more efficiently than today's silicon-based devices. "These topologically-protected spin currents are robust against disorders and defects, making them reliable even in imperfect conditions," Ghiasi said. However, there are still some limitations to overcome. Unlike AH, the QSH effect, which is more suitable for developing quantum circuits, observed here only occurs at very low temperatures, which limits its immediate use in consumer electronics. The researchers now aim to investigate ways to make the effect more robust at higher temperatures and explore other material combinations where this approach could work. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Elle
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
How To Take Inspiration From the Menswear Runways This Season
Once a shyer younger sibling to its glamorous September counterpart, men's fashion week has increasingly become a moment to watch. In recent years, women-led menswear labels—including Wales Bonner, Martine Rose, Bianca Saunders, and Bode—have increasingly set the tone for a new wave of masculine dressing. Before his departure from Gucci, Sabato De Sarno often showed complementary looks between each category. Not to mention Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons's continued co-creative directorial collaboration at Prada, which has made both the men's and women's shows equally compelling events to watch. If anything, men's and women's fashion have become more communicative than ever. And the spring 2026 collections were filled with ultra-contemporary pieces that can be worn across any gender. At Saint Laurent, Anthony Vaccarello has found great success reinvigorating bold-shouldered suiting for women and electrifyingly editorial over-the-knee leather boots for men. At the men's show in Paris on Tuesday, Gabbriette, who attended as a guest, was the embodiment of the sultriness that the original le smoking evoked. These sartorial translations were also seen at Jonathan Anderson's highly anticipated debut at Dior last Friday—the iconic New Look and Delft dress were reinterpreted into subtly shaped structured jackets and voluminously pleated cargo shorts. But the biggest current trend on the men's spring 2026 runway? Easy styling that combines a multitude of high-low elements, whether it be pairing a pajama short with a designer jacket or a casual shoe with a brocade blazer. The message was less about a single, unattainable piece of luxury and more so how to interpret this season's brighter and bolder color palette. 'We saw collections rooted in beauty, certainly, but also grounded in real clothes designed for real lives—pieces to covet, wear, and ultimately keep,' says Simon Longland, the fashion buying director at Harrods. Wales Bonner was a beautiful example of this, as designer Grace Wales Bonner unveiled her classic interpretation of that grounded-in-reality aesthetic. Track pants (also everywhere this season) were paired with beautifully cut jackets and sheer blouses tucked into low-slung baggy jeans, a styling mix representative of real life. Thanks to freshly debuted designers like Julian Klausner at Dries Van Noten, who is beautifully honoring the legacy before him, prints (and clashing them) are coming back in newly exciting ways. Oversized silk scarves were tied like sarongs both over pants and bare legs. Junya Watanabe also played with the item, incorporating one into an asymmetrical draped blouse. This motif is something that can be immediately applied to any wardrobe as an exciting visual addition to simpler outfits. Plus, if you still have an Alexander McQueen skull scarf from back in the day, Charli XCX just wore one as a top during her performance at Glastonbury. For more than a few designers, mid-calf socks were paired with penny loafers and teeny-tiny microshorts that sometimes bordered on bloomers, cementing a popular styling choice already seen on both men and women on the streets today. Same with barely-there minimalist flip-flops (which are really having a moment thanks to brands like The Row)—when styled with baggy jeans or oversized chinos, like at Ami Paris, the look becomes OG The O.C., perfect for the summer heat waves. Prada, Dior, and Saint Laurent favored chunky color blocking that immediately brightened up the runways and nodded to prep's new-wave revival. Grass green, mustard yellow, navy blue, and burgundy were prominent across many of the collections. If previous seasons refrained from 'loud' dressing, all inhibitions in that regard have finally been shaken. Whether it be large stripes or huge swaths of interrupted color, vibrant hues—complemented by even brighter, oversized accessories—were the key to leaning into this aesthetic. Even though September has yet to come, menswear has quickly become a mid-season mood board inspiration. Take it from the runway experts: boldly colored dressing, funky yet minimalist footwear, and casual styling are here to stay.
