Traditional methods for following the spread of disease are hard work, according to biologist Denise Dearing of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. She studies hantavirus, an untreatable rodent-borne virus that has infected more than 560 people in the United States since it was discovered in 1993. It's fatal in about half the cases. To keep tabs on the disease, "we had been going out and surveying mouse populations," Dearing said. But catching the mice, testing their blood, and microchipping them for future reference was difficult and time-consuming.
