Engineering

Engineers create artificial cilia at the microscale

A small team of engineers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, working with a colleague from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Germany, has found a way to create tiny artificial cilia ...

Computer Sciences

AI improves detail, estimate of urban air pollution

Using artificial intelligence, Cornell engineers have simplified and reinforced models that accurately calculate the fine particulate matter (PM2.5)—the soot, dust and exhaust emitted by trucks and cars that get into human ...

Engineering

The most mathematically efficient solar cooker designs

A study of different solar cooker designs has alighted on the optimal form and structure, which can be constructed or bought in the developing world. The most efficient available design meshes well with mathematical models ...

Energy & Green Tech

California scales up 1st-in-US electric truck sale proposal

California regulators on Tuesday strengthened a proposed first-in-the-nation rule that would force auto makers to sell more electric delivery vans and work trucks in a state with the country's worst air quality.

Engineering

Vermont team invents emergency ventilator

Over the last three weeks, a team of scientists, engineers and doctors at the University of Vermont have developed a new design—and built a working model—for a simple, inexpensive ventilator.

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Lung

The lung or pulmonary system is the essential respiration organ in air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located in the chest on either side of the heart. Their principal function is to transport oxygen from the atmosphere into the bloodstream, and to release carbon dioxide from the bloodstream into the atmosphere. This exchange of gases is accomplished in the mosaic of specialized cells that form millions of tiny, exceptionally thin-walled air sacs called alveoli.

In order to completely explain the anatomy of the lungs, it is necessary to discuss the passage of air through the mouth to the alveoli. Once air progresses through the mouth or nose, it travels through the oropharynx, nasopharynx, the larynx, the trachea, and a progressively subdividing system of bronchi and bronchioles until it finally reaches the alveoli where the gas exchange of carbon dioxide and oxygen takes place.

The drawing and expulsion of air (ventilation) is driven by muscular action; in early tetrapods, air was driven into the lungs by the pharyngeal muscles, whereas in reptiles, birds and mammals a more complicated musculoskeletal system is used.

Medical terms related to the lung often begin with pulmo-, from the Latin pulmonarius ("of the lungs"), or with pneumo- (from Greek πνεύμων "lung")

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA