Tag: University of Vermont

Anxiety and depression are surprisingly common among young children – as many as one in five kids suffer from one of them, starting as early as the preschool years. But it can be hard to detect these conditions, known as “internalizing disorders,” because the symptoms are so inward-facing that parents, teachers and doctors often fail to notice them.

The issue isn’t insignificant. If left untreated, children with internalizing disorders are at greater risk of substance abuse and suicide later in life.

“Because of the scale of the problem, this begs for a screening technology to identify kids early enough so they can be directed to the care they need,” says Ryan McGinnis, a biomedical engineer at the University of Vermont.

So McGinnis teamed up with Ellen McGinnis, a clinical psychologist at the University of Vermont, and colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, Maria Muzik, Katherine Rosenblum and Kate Fitzgerald, to develop a tool that could help screen children for internalizing disorders to catch them early enough to be treated. The work was published on January 16 in the journal PLOS ONE.

The team used a “mood induction task,” a common research method designed to elicit specific behaviors and feelings such as anxiety. The researchers tested 63 children, some of whom were known to have internalizing disorders.

Children were led into a dimly lit room, while the facilitator gave scripted statements to build anticipation, such as “I have something to show you” and “Let’s be quiet so it doesn’t wake up.” At the back of the room was a covered terrarium, which the facilitator quickly uncovered, then pulled out a fake snake. The children were then reassured by the facilitator and allowed to play with the snake.

Normally, trained researchers would watch a video of the task and score the child’s behavior and speech during the task to diagnose internalizing disorders. In this work, the team used a wearable motion sensor to monitor a child’s movement, and a machine learning algorithm to analyze their movement to distinguish between children with anxiety or depression and those without. After processing the movement data, the algorithm identified differences in the way the two groups moved that could be used to separate them, identifying children with internalizing disorders with 81 percent accuracy – better than the standard parent questionnaire.

“The way that kids with internalizing disorders moved was different than those without,” says Ryan McGinnis.

The algorithm determined that movement during the first phase of the task, before the snake was revealed, was the most indicative of potential psychopathology. Children with internalizing disorders tended to turn away from the potential threat more than the control group. It also picked up on subtle variations in the way the children turned that helped distinguish between the two groups.

This lines up well with what was expected from psychological theory, says Ellen McGinnis. Children with internalizing disorders would be expected to show more anticipatory anxiety, and the turning-away behavior is the kind of thing that human observers would code as a negative reaction when scoring the video. The advantage is that the sensors and algorithm work much faster.

“Something that we usually do with weeks of training and months of coding can be done in a few minutes of processing with these instruments,” she says. The algorithm needs just 20 seconds of data from the anticipation phase to make its decision.

That opens the door to using technology like this to help screen large numbers of children to identify those that would benefit from further psychological help.

“Children with anxiety disorders need an increased level of psychological care and intervention. Our paper suggests that this instrumented mood induction task can help us identify those kids and get them to the services they need,” says Ellen McGinnis.

Failing to catch these conditions early can be a problem for kids as they grow up says Muzik. “If anxiety symptoms do not get detected early in life, they might develop into a full-blown anxiety and mood disorder,” she says, with subsequently increased risk for substance abuse and suicide.

If these conditions are caught early though, there are good treatments available, Muzik said. Early intervention is key because young children’s brains are extremely malleable and respond well to treatment.

The next step will be to refine the algorithm and develop additional tests to analyze voice data and other information that will allow the technology to distinguish between anxiety and depression. The ultimate goal is to develop a battery of assessments that could be used in schools or doctors’ offices to screen children as part of their routine developmental assessments.

Muzik says developments like this are exciting because psychiatry has been lagging behind other fields of medicine in its use of technology to aid diagnosis and treatment.  “It’s exciting to move the field along with technology,” she says. “We are on the verge of new developments.”

Source: UVM News

After a two-year hiatus, the Grossman School of Business’ premier student-run event, the Family Enterprise Case Competition, returned to the global stage on January 9 to 12. Students, coaches and judges from nearly 30 different countries descended upon a snowy Burlington to compete in FECC 2019.

In its sixth edition, this year’s competition was long awaited after construction/renovation of Ifshin and Kalkin halls postponed last year’s competition. FECC 2019 was Grossman’s largest yet, with 25 undergraduate and graduate teams, 52 judges and 49 Grossman students all working through real-world cases involving family businesses. After four days of presentations and competition, Carleton University’s Sprott School of Business from Canada and University of Adelaide from Australia took home first place for the undergraduate and graduate leagues, respectively.

FECC is unique in that it is the only case competition in the world that focuses on issues important to family businesses. “Surprisingly, family businesses form the large majority of business enterprises, yet they tend to be overlooked by most institutions, governments and even educators,” says Pramodita Sharma, a professor and Daniel Clarke Sanders Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Grossman School of Business.

In fact, nearly 70 percent of U.S.-based businesses are family businesses. Despite the “mom-and-pop shop” misperception of family businesses, some of the world’s leading enterprises, including Nike, Wal-Mart, Samsung, Oracle, Volkswagen and Facebook, are family operated.

FECC senior lead coordinators Abby Collins ’19 and Doug Hirschhorn ’19 say that bringing the world’s top schools in family business together under one roof illuminates the nuances of how these businesses operate across the globe. “This competition and this event really facilitate a unique understanding of how different cultures view different scenarios in family business,” says Hirschhorn.

Collins points out that succession lines, for example, vary among cultures and countries. “In the United States, the person who takes over a family business might just be whoever is most important to the company or whoever is most devoted. Whereas in China, it’s just the firstborn son. But what happens when the firstborn son doesn’t want to take over?” she explains. These are the kinds of real-world issues that FECC explores in its cases.

Throughout the four days of FECC 2019, student teams were given multiple cases, prepared by judges in advance, and tasked with formulating their best recommendations for how a company or client might proceed. The teams then presented their ideas in a succinct and professional manner to panels of judges, who evaluated them on their analysis of the case, feasibility in their recommendation, creativity, time management and more.

This year’s judges spanned 12 different countries and dozens of industries, from politics to tech. Alumna Emily Bates ’15, an FECC senior lead coordinator during her time at the University of Vermont, returned to the competition in a new capacity this year as a judge. Now a project manager at Google, she says planning an event as large as FECC prepared her for her current professional role.

“FECC also gave me the ability to network with other students, coaches and judges from all around the world—folks that I still stay in contact with today,” she adds.

John Young, coach of Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business team from Canada, echoes Bates’ sentiment on the global community surrounding FECC. Young has attended each FECC since its inaugural competition in 2013, and likens the event to a homecoming in which he gets to work with the best the world has to offer in family business.

“It’s a phenomenal case competition, it’s the best organized one. I feel that—right from the start—they wanted it to be a classy product, and I believe they did that, right from the very first year,” says Young.

Video and photography by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist.

Source: UVM News

A new study shows that privacy on social media is like second-hand smoke. It’s controlled by the people around you.

Individual choice has long been considered a bedrock principle of online privacy. If you don’t want to be on Facebook, you can leave or not sign up in the first place. Then your behavior will be your own private business, right?

The new study presents powerful evidence that the answer to that question is no.

The team of scientists, from the University of Vermont and the University of Adelaide, gathered more than thirty million public posts on Twitter from 13,905 users. With this data, they showed that information within the Twitter messages from 8 or 9 of a person’s contacts make it possible to predict that person’s later tweets as accurately as if they were looking directly at that person’s own Twitter feed.

The new study also shows that if a person leaves a social media platform—or never joined—the online posts and words of their friends still provide about 95% of the “potential predictive accuracy,” the scientists write, of a person’s future activities—even without any of that person’s data.

Looked at from the other direction, when you sign up for Facebook or another social media platform” you think you’re giving up your information, but you’re giving up your friends’ information too!” says University of Vermont mathematician James Bagrow who led the new research.

The study was published January 21 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

Privacy matters

The research raises profound questions about the fundamental nature of privacy—and how, in a highly networked society, a person’s choices and identity are embedded in that network. The new study shows that, at least in theory, a company, government or other actor can accurately profile a person–think political party, favorite products, religious commitments—from their friends, even if they’ve never been on social media or delete their account.

“There’s no place to hide in a social network,” says Lewis Mitchell, a co-author on the new study who was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Vermont and is now senior lecturer in applied mathematics at the University of Adelaide in Australia.

How information moves on social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, has become a powerful factor in protest movements, national elections, and the rise and fall of commercial brands. Along the way, people on these platforms reveal massive amounts of information about themselves—and their friends.

However, scientists have not known if there is a fundamental limit to how much predictability is contained within this tidal wave of data. In the new study, the scientists used their analysis of Twitter writings to show that there is a mathematical upper limit on how much predictive information a social network can hold–but that it makes little difference if the person being profiled, or whose behavior is being predicted, is on or off that network when their friends are on the network.

“You alone don’t control your privacy on social media platforms,” says UVM professor Jim Bagrow, “Your friends have a say too.”

Source: UVM News

University of Vermont president Tom Sullivan has been appointed to the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions. He will begin serving immediately and continue through August 31, 2021. 

The committee is an independent administrative body charged with deciding infractions cases involving NCAA member institutions, their employees and their student. Its membership includes volunteers from NCAA member institutions and conferences and individuals from the general public who have legal training.

“It’s a great honor to be asked by the NCAA to serve on the Committee on Infractions,” Sullivan said. “Working to ensure the fairness and integrity of collegiate athletics is of paramount importance. I look forward to contributing to the committee’s important work.”

The committee has the authority to address prehearing procedural matters, set and conduct hearings or reviews, find facts, conclude violations of NCAA legislation, prescribe appropriate penalties and monitor institutions on probation to ensure compliance with penalties and terms of probation, as well as conduct follow-up proceedings as may be necessary.

In July 2016, Sullivan was appointed vice chair of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Division I Presidential Forum; his term expired in October 2018. He also has served as chair of the Board of Presidents of the America East Athletic Conference. Before becoming a law school faculty member and dean, Sullivan was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. and a trial attorney with a large New York/Washington, D.C.  law firm.

Source: UVM News

Jon Torrey, a UVM Class of 2011 graduate, is giving a tour of Dealer.com’s Burlington headquarters, where he works as a digital advertising product manager for the leading-edge tech company. It’s a vast, open space with staff clustered in work pods and mini-conference rooms, brightly painted corridor “streets” named for Vermont towns, a regulation-size basketball court and gym, and a farm-to-table eatery called the Dot-Calm Café.

The place has all the trappings of a Silicon Valley success story. It’s a truth also illustrated by the fact that the company—which creates web sites for car dealerships and helps them create strategic digital advertising plans using a variety of software products—was recently acquired for a second time, for $4.2 billion.

Torrey says that “Dealer,” as it’s known around town, is representative of an emergent Burlington, a technology hub that might surprise outsiders. And he’s not alone in that estimate. The New York Times noted that the city has “lower unemployment than Silicon Valley, spawning a wave of technology pioneers.” Business Insider ranked Burlington as one of the “15 hottest American cities of the future,” and the city also made a Verizon list of the top ten most innovative metro areas in the nation.

For college students attending local schools like UVM, Burlington’s growing prowess as a tech hub is very good news, Torrey says. The city’s thriving network of start-ups, growing mid-stage companies and, increasingly, big league firms like Dealer, offer a wealth of opportunities for students to explore internships during college and career-launching jobs after graduation.

“If you look at what’s happening here right now, if you’re someone who is motivated, and you get out there and you start networking,” he says, “you’re going to crush it.”

Torrey is a case in point. As a sophomore, the economics major landed internships first at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, a tech incubator with an office on the UVM campus, then at Hear Forward, a small firm that developed online social advertising strategies for clients like Seventh Generation and Dealer.com, at that point a relative newcomer.

Torrey and his colleagues were so successful at driving engagement and sales on Facebook for their clients – a relatively rare skill set at the time – Dealer.com bought the company. Torrey, who’d been hired by Hear Forward after graduation, suddenly found himself “on the rocket ship,” working at a company of 600 just beginning warp speed growth that would see employees more than double over the next five years.

As Torrey’s career has quickly taken hold, he’s considered options to leave Vermont and relocate to some of the nation’s tech strongholds. But when he went looking, to his surprise his experience at Dealer left him unimpressed by the better-known firms.

The emphasis the company put on health – with its gym and locally sourced food – was part of it. So was the intellectual challenge of the work. But it was the company’s culture that really set it apart. “The group of people who did it here, they had fun. They were a family; life is just a lot brighter when you’re around them,” he says.

A job promotion at Dealer, coupled with all the things he loves about Burlington — four-season recreation to the food scene to a friendly network of young professionals — convinced Torrey to stay put.

The success of Dealer.com has had a powerful ripple effect on the broader Burlington tech industry. In 2014, the company was acquired for the first time, for $1 billion, creating a windfall not only for Dealers’ five founders but for a large group of innovators who’d joined the company in its early days.

While they could have gone anywhere, Dealer’s newly minted millionaires were as enamored of Burlington as Torrey was. They decided to stick around, founding new companies, joining existing ones and investing in others.

That’s a very good sign, says Lee Bouyea, who manages technology investments for FreshTracks Capital, a local venture capital firm. “When successful entrepreneurs reinvest in the local economy, it’s a signal of an ecosystem that is self-sustaining and growing.”

With rapidly growing Dealer-linked companies like Fluency, E-Block, Social Sentinel, Widewail and Dealer Policy joining an anchor in Dealer and a host of other local tech firms, Burlington was becoming a tech mecca.

That’s how Carly Caswell, 2018 UVM Grossman School of Business alumna, sees it. Caswell landed a job at Widget Brain, a Netherlands-based company that helps clients use artificial intelligence and machine learning to solve business problems. The company, which will double in size this year, chose to base its U.S. operation in Burlington.

“There are so many different tech companies here,” Caswell says. “I feel like I can network with all these other people, whether they’re coming from Dealer or somewhere else. It’s a very engaged community.”

Source: UVM News

Last summer Matt Schildkamp ’18 travelled to the Florida Everglades to spend a week collecting nature film clips as part of a project by his advisor Sarah Nilsen, associate professor of film & television studies. The inspiration for his field activity was a 1953 Walt Disney True-Life Adventure film Prowlers of the Everglades. 

After checking into a Travel Lodge in Homestead, Schildkamp walked into the sawgrass marsh and determined where the videographers for the original Disney film, Alfred and Elma Milotte, gathered their footage in the early 1950’s. It was a short stretch of trail called the Anhinga, now covered by a boardwalk. He set up his tripod and waited. 

What he saw was similar to what the Milottes saw: long-legged egrets wading slowly through the wetlands seeking fish in the shallows; alligators cruising through the waters or sunning themselves in clearings. But he was troubled by what he didn’t see.

“A big theme of the Disney film was this big circle of life, how mammals like racoons sustained themselves on alligator eggs and hatchlings,” he said. “I saw alligators, but I never saw any mammals.”

When he asked where the raccoons had gone, a park ranger told him he hadn’t seen a mammal of any kind in ten years—unless it was roadkill.

Schildkamp was in Florida for just a few days, while his predecessors spent nearly a year filming through the wet and dry seasons in the Everglades. But he was there long enough to witness how quickly the ecosystem had changed, and there was no mystery regarding one of the root causes.

“Snakes are a big problem there, and iguanas are a big problem,” Schildkamp said. “They were introduced accidently through the pet trade. Not that that’s the sole reason for the changes there, but the non-native snakes have no natural predators. So they reproduce fast and eat the mammals.” 

Florida naturalists have watched in recent decades as fauna in the Everglades have been invaded by exotic frogs, lizards and snakes. The Burmese python may have already supplanted the alligator as the apex predator in the region. 

The Disney Connection

Nilsen admires the Disney True-Life Adventure films not just for their technical craft—many outdoor filming innovations were developed by naturalists who recorded the original footage—but also for the vantage point they provide for the state of wildlife in 1950’s America. 

Disney Studios created 13 of these short films between 1948 and 1960 and they became staples for school audiences and television programs like Walt Disney’s Disneyland and Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. Most of the films featured wildlife in North America. Eight of them won academy awards. 

“Walt Disney was enormously interested in animals and the environment, and he was very invested in these films,” Nilsen said. “When you look at histories of nature documentaries, almost all cite the Disney films as a central part of the story, but very little scholarship has been done on their impact.”  

The films were “Disneyfied” in ways that might seem hokey to today’s viewers of Animal Planetor National Geographic Wild. For instance a scene featuring a pair of dueling scorpions in the desert southwest is set to square dance music. In another film, two bighorn sheep lock horns with Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus” playing in the background. But Nilsen notes that the films had an enormous impact on the environmental movement at the time. 

“Many people who went into the park service or wildlife rehabilitation or some form of environmental protection say they were inspired by these films, she said.

An outdoor enthusiast and animal lover herself—she teaches an animals in films and television at UVM—Nilsen sees the True-Life canon as a baseline to measure how the environment and wildlife populations have changed in the intervening years. Schildkamp’s foray, funded by a College of Arts and Sciences internship grant, was the first of several faculty-student collaborations she envisions. 

Next Steps

Schildkamp, who graduated in December with a degree in film & television studies, spent much of the past few months helping Nilsen edit footage. He sees himself as a trailblazer for other students working in the Everglades or other remote locations.  

“I did a ton of research before my trip, learning about the Everglades and the Disney films,” he says. “Honestly, this was the most relevant internship work I could possibly hope to be engaged in.”

Nilsen has applied for a research grant that will fund trips to Alaska and Seattle to explore archives left behind by the Milottes and another couple, Herb and Lois Cristler, who also filmed wildlife scenes for the Disney series. On the way, she hopes to visit Olympic National Park to research elk migration, another Disney True-Life theme. Plans include a book on the historical significance of the Disney films.

“If we could go back to the original filming locations and re-create the documentaries, what would they reveal about our environment policies and the effects of global warming? I’d love to send students to these locations (reshoot) like the southwest, where the living Desert was filmed, or the Badlands where Vanishing Prairie was filmed.”

Source: UVM News

Highlights of the UVM Board of Trustees meeting held January 31 through February 2, 2019 included the following:

President Tom Sullivan brought board members up to date on the once every-10-year accreditation process the university is currently undergoing, conducted by the New England Commission on Higher Education (NECHE). More than 100 faculty and staff have been working on the effort over the past two years, creating a self-study report to submit to NECHE. The process will culminate with a visit from March 24-27 by a five-member team of accreditors that will feature meetings with faculty, staff and students and several open forums. Accreditors will deliver an oral report at the of the visit and a written report later in the year.    

UVM Foundation president and CEO Shane Jacobson gave the board an update on the university’ comprehensive fundraising campaign, which has exceeded its $500 million goal by nearly $50 million dollars. The Foundation will celebrate the success of the campaign on May 17 and officially close it on June 30. 

In a report on grants and contracts, Board chair David Daigle said the university has already secured nearly $73 million, which would put it on pace to exceed last year’s total of $136 million.

A capital projects update from Robert Vaughan and Paula Carlaccini featured a slide show showing the construction progress of Innovation Hall, the last portion of the STEM complex to be built, from groundbreaking to the present. The project will be completed in May. This summer all the fences that have enclosed the UVM central campus construction district for the past several years will be eliminated, Vaughn said, and next fall bus service will be restored to the area. 

In the Educational Policy and Institutional Resources (EPIR) Committee meeting, a number of new majors, minors and certificate programs were approve, including a Bachelor of Arts in Dance; Certificate in Community Music: Organ; Bachelor of Science in Anthropology; Undergraduate Certificate in Religious Literacy in the Professions; Minor in Reporting and Documentary Storytelling, all in the College of Arts and Sciences; and an Undergraduate Certificate and a Continuing Education Academic Certificate in Integrated Health & Wellness Coaching in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences and Continuing and Distance Education.

During the Budget, Finance and Investment (BFI) Committee meeting, the committee approved $4 million to be spent on deferred maintenance in 2019/2020. The committee also set maximum rates for 2020 comprehensive, SGA and IRA fees. Those details are available in the consent agenda. 

See the full consent agenda.

Source: UVM News

Biology professor Lori Stevens spends a lot of time wearing a lab coat as she sleuths out DNA sequences found in the gut of the reduviid bug, often called the “kissing bug,” which is responsible for the spread of Chagas disease, an affliction that affects 8-10 million people in Latin America. Almost as often, she’s wearing a t-shirt in the hot Guatemalan sun, helping rural villagers who are most vulnerable to the disease learn to retrofit their homes against the insect. 

Chagas is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi which is transmitted by the kissing bugs.

The insect lies low during the day and emerges at night. Kissing bugs infected with T. cruzi transmit the parasite to humans by piercing the skin—often near areas like the eyes, nose or mouth—and then defecating near the wound. The parasite, present in the feces, enters the host’s bloodstream through an opening in the skin when the person scratches the itchy bite. The parasite can also be passed from mother to fetus, or through contaminated blood or even contaminated food.

Stevens says the disease often isn’t detected because the short-term symptoms—fever, swelling, aches and fatigue—resemble so many other common ailments. Those afflicted often go into remission, only to have the symptoms emerge later. Drugs are available to treat Chagas, but if the disease isn’t diagnosed early, heart disease and serious digestive problems can develop.

“Medication does a pretty good job in acute cases, but it has side effects, and drugs aren’t really an option for people who are at the chronic stage,” Stevens explains. “It’s hard to get people into treatment and one-third of patients have cardio-vascular complications by the time they are diagnosed.”

In the Field

Part of Stevens’ fascination with Chagas is that while it is so widespread, it is also entirely preventable. 

“Poverty is a marker for the disease,” she says. Chagas is prevalent in rural villages where homes are made of mud bricks, with dirt floors. The kissing bugs have plenty of nooks and crannies in which to hide. 

Stevens and members of the research team Chagas EcoHealth have learned that education, prevention and access to early health care are important tools to stop the disease from spreading. 

Early attempts to build new cinderblock homes in rural villages achieved only partial success because families tended to move their livestock into the new buildings and continue to live in their established homes. Chagas EcoHealth works with communities to develop methods that are culturally relevant to residents while reducing exposure to the bugs.

Community members receive training provided by EcoHealth with funding from a variety of sources including the US National Institutes of Health, the Canadian International Development Research Centre and the World Health Organization-Pan American Health Organization improve the dwellings by plastering the exterior and interior walls and pouring concrete floors to eliminate places where kissing bugs like to hide. 

“It’s a more holistic approach,” Stevens says. “Chemical spraying by itself is not a sustainable long-term solution. We try to make the homes more resistant to the bugs using mostly local materials. The families who are physically able do the work on their home. Volunteers will help with a house of someone who’s not capable of doing it themselves.”

EcoHealth has many collaborators including researchers at UVM, Loyola University in New Orleans and San Carlos University in Guatemala. Stevens, UVM evolutionary biologist Sara Helms Cahan and engineer Donna Rizzo of the UVM Engineering School have contributed to the program, along with medical entomologist Carlota Monroy and geneticist Sergio Melgar of Guatemala and molecular parasitologist Patricia Dorn of Loyola and undergraduates at each institution.

Stevens says the different perspectives provided by each member of the group is a great asset in advancing both research and on-the-ground collaboration. The trust andmespirit de corpsthat has developed between the participants—Stevens has been involved with the group since 2006—allows them to draw on each other’s strengths and resources. 

The collaborative model mirrors another program Stevens is involved with at UVM: the new Quantitative and Evolutionary STEM Training (QuEST) graduate program. QuEST trains doctoral students to solve environmental and global health problems that draws on UVM faculty in biology, plant and soil sciences, math, computer science, engineering, and molecular and biomedical sciences. 

“It illustrates how groups of people from different backgrounds can bring new perspectives to the table, and offer more creative solutions,” says Stevens. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”

In the Lab 

Stevens is also interested in the biology of how Chagas is transmitted. She’s the principal investigator for a National Science Foundation grant that is unravelling the mysteries of which parasites kissing bugs carry—and who or what they’re biting. 

The grant funded a recent paper published this fall in the Journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases authored by Rubenstein School graduate student Lucia Orantes. Helms Cahan was co-advisor and senior author of the paper titled Uncovering vector, parasite, blood meal and microbiome patterns from mixed-DNA specimens of the Chagas disease vector Triatomadimidiata. 

Orantes, Helms Cahan and colleagues extracted DNA from the legs and abdomens of 32 kissing bugs from Central America. By filtering out sequences common to both body parts, they discovered the insects had taken blood meals from humans and other animals, including chickens, dogs, and ducks. They also discovered  two different strains of the T. cruzi parasite.

Knowing where the bugs originate and what animals they are feeding on can help the researchers identify bug colonies that could be contained or destroyed. Even more promising, genetic technology harnessed by the team could identify particular bacteria that produce antiparasitic compounds. Kissing bugs ingesting the microbes could act as a “Trojan Horse” to kill off the harmful T. cruzi, leaving the rest of bug intact.

Previous research shows that during the spring, kissing bugs can quickly re-infest areas that have been chemically sprayed. But spraying is a short-term environmentally compromised method. 

“This is a nice study because it focuses on the a potentially powerful tool that could pinpoint closely related individual bugs and identify which house they came from,” said Stevens. “Having these thousands of genetic markers gives you a high resolution picture.” 

Source: UVM News