Mr. Self booked us a tour at 10 am today at the Vector Textiles lab at NC State University. He initially warned us about getting lost, but Will and I never expected to be driving down a dirt road lined with horses, cows, and goats. As we traveled closer to the lake near the back of the Veterinary Clinic at NC State, we realized that we were lost. Rather, the address that we typed in got confused since there were two roads with the same name. We frantically called another member of Team Mawan to send their current location, and soon we arrived at the one-story building that was the Vector Textiles lab. Mr. Self also brought his dog, Lyda, with him. She was very shy but sweet.
A very adamant entomologist, Grayson, was our tour guide. He showed us lots of scientific tools, such as the insanely cold freezers (-80 degrees C) to the huge centrifuge with a jet engine. After a rundown of the different rooms and labs, he took us to the mosquito room. There were shelves of thousands of mosquitos, a few hundred in each glass cube.
Grayson then proceeded to stick his hand a vat of mosquitos, which elicited perplexed responses from Team Mawan. He relieved some anxiety by explaining that it takes a couple of seconds for the mosquitos to actually draw blood, so he had to shake his forearm every couple of seconds.
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He then showed us the testing room, which contained a net, where they have subjects sleep under the net overnight and then tally up the number of bites they get.
Overall, today was a very fun experience, and Grayson educated us about insects and mosquitos. In order to create a product that does not allow the insects to resist treatment, one needs to understand and learn a considerable amount of information about the specific insect and its tendencies. After the tour, we went to lunch with Mr. Self and Dr. Mc, who came and visited us.
After a scrumptious meal, we headed back to HQ to polish our research, tired but ready for beginning the final presentation tomorrow!