Skip to main content

Featured post

Marketers Will Pay Naira for Dangote Fuel -IPMAN

Aliko Dangote Refined petroleum products from the $20bn Dangote Petroleum Refinery are to be sold in naira and not in the United States dollar as speculated in some quarters, oil marketers clarified on Monday. Dealers in the downstream oil sector also stated that the registration process for marketers at the refinery was still ongoing, as many operators had continued to register with the plant. It was further gathered that officials of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority were meeting with the management of the refinery to perfect the pricing template for products produced by the facility. On January 12, 2023, the Dangote Petroleum Refinery announced the commencement of production of Automotive Gas Oil, also known as diesel, and JetA1 or aviation fuel. The President, Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, had in a statement issued by the firm, said, “We have started the production of diesel and aviation fuel, and the products will be in the market within this mon...
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Health: Mosquitoes Stab Humans and Animals with a Syringe-like Proboscis


Viewed side by side, the insects’ organ and a human-made syringe are uncannily similar

Mosquitoes Stab Animals with a Syringelike Proboscis
Tip of a mosquito’s labrum (left), a part of its proboscis that helps suck blood, and red blood cells on a syringe needle (right). Credit: Ted Kinsman Science Source (mosquito labrum); Steve Gschmeissner Science Source (syringe needle)

Calling the red welt a mosquito leaves behind on your arm a “bite” is really a misnomer. A more realistic term might be “injection”: the structure the insect uses to puncture our skin bears an uncanny resemblance to a syringe tip, as these two close-up photographs show.

Medical injection technology has come a long way. After all, some of the first subcutaneous drug delivery options involved shoving a pellet of medication under the skin with a darning needle. But when these clunky needles were considered cutting-edge science, mosquitoes had already been plunging their blood-sucking mechanism into animals for millions of years. All the insects have this tool, called a proboscis, but only females suck blood because they need the fluid’s protein for egg production. The proboscis is a Swiss Army knife appendage of six separate instruments that facilitate blood collection. Of these instruments, five function to saw into our skin, push open the hole and drop saliva that keeps our fluids drinkable. Pictured here is the sixth piece, called the labrum, which funnels out blood. The system is so efficient and painless, engineers still look to mosquitos to inspire future medical devices, such as needles used to biopsy internal tumors.

Tip of the labrum of a female mosquito (a member of the family Culicidae). This sharp tool is used to suck blood from animals. Though they are invisible in the photograph, the mosquito has sensing hairs at the end of its personal syringe that detect where best to plunge. Credit: Ted Kinsman Science Source
Composite colored scanning electron micrograph of a needle with red blood cells on its tip. Credit: Steve Gschmeissner Science Source

Source
Email Post
Labels:

Comments

  1. Dwayne26 February 2021 at 10:59

    Very informative post, I have read your all Blogs. Your all blog contains good and unique information and these are very helpful for me to find which type of injections used in medical fields. Thank you for sharing this post here.Best injection molding company

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oluboba Ezekiel Adeyinka27 February 2021 at 05:16

    Thank you for your kind comments

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment