Bed bugs have been a serious problem for the past fifteen years or so and are getting worse every year.   So our group here is doing a number of different projects on bed bugs.  Most importantly how the bed bugs find us.  How the bed bugs find the host from which they need to take a blood meal.  One of the critical issues with bed bugs is that the current pest control approaches that we have are either in effective in a case of many of the insecticides that we have, or extremely expensive in a case of for example heat treatments.  So, we see the future as developing what we call liquid bait for bed bugs.  A liquid bait would have four different components.  The first component is to get the bed bug from wherever it is to the bait.  The second component is once the bed bug gets there we need to entice the bed bug to feed or to engorge on the bait as if it were a human.  The third component then of this liquid bait formulation would be the insecticide.  DoesnŐt necessarily need to be a synthetic insecticide.  It can be a biological control agent for example.  It could be a virus or a fungus or a bacteria that kills the bed bug.  And of course the fourth component of this bait would be to try to use an insecticide or a biological control agent that after the bed bug feeds it can defecate in its aggregation and therefore expose its family to either the biological control agent or the insecticide.  And so you can have sort of a domino effect or an amplification effect.  And so these are the four important components of the liquid bait.  We think that this chancellorŐs innovation grant will really speed up and move us faster towards developing this liquid bait concept.  If we look at the bites that bed bugs cause, we look at the allergies that they cause, we look at the secondary infections that people get from scratching at these bites.  We look at the psychological issues that are involved, the anxiety of having bed bugs, the isolation from society that many people experience because they donŐt want anyone else to know.  They donŐt want their friends, they stop inviting their friends to their home because they have bed bugs.  When we look at sleeplessness especially amongst the elderly it can cause tremendous anxiety and sleeplessness.  Bed bugs are actually a very important health concern.  And so I think itŐs important to convince both the public and federal agencies that bed bugs indeed are a very important medical concern.