Science & Technology World

Next to the global economy, overhauling the U.S. health care system dominated headlines in 2009. We'll leave the debate over a public option for others to tackle and instead focus on one of the major ways in which an overhauled health care system would affect the tech industry: digitizing health records. At the close of 2008 , an in-depth survey published by the New England Journal of Medicine found that only 4 percent of physicians have a fully functional electronic records system . The health care industry's enormous paper trail is notoriously expensive, inefficient, and outdated. So in early 2009 , the stimulus package enacted by Congress pushed for medical records to go electronic . Among the stated goals: "utilization of an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014. " By 2015 , government reimbursements to physicians who are not participating in the federal e-record effort will begin to decline. Today, organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, which by early 2009 had already taken its 450 nationwide locations mostly paperless , remain anomalies. The Obama stimulus package committed $59 billion to revamping the health care industry, earmarking $19 billion for hospital technology efforts alone, but even that is considered little more than a down payment on the total cost to modernize a system that is extremely convoluted, not to mention critical to secure. Another stimulus goal is to establish a uniform policy for health IT . Bill Mitchin, co-chair of a health policy collaborative called the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration, said, "At our very first meeting, we started talking about HIE (health information exchange), and we spent two and a half hours trying to decide if HIE is a noun or a verb. The answer is both." Of course, tech giants are lining up for stimulus dollars , but will any of them get it right? President Obama says he supports an open- source system , while MSN moved forward with My Health Info and IBM partnered with Google Health , which uses software built partially on open-source standards. At the CTIA Wireless 2009 trade show in Las Vegas, many companies talked about jumping on the stimulus gravy train . Wireless companies also flooded a health care technology trade show in Chicago the following week, saying that the most useful electronic records will be those that access data directly from diagnostic and monitoring devices wirelessly, so medical professionals won't have to commit valuable ( read: expensive) time to entering data. Of course, as the industry struggles to go digital, 2009 proved to be a year of tremendous innovation as well. The world of health-related mobile phone apps continues to expand, from scanning bar codes for health ratings and finding the best medicine in a pharmacy , to tracking swing flu outbreaks and carrying the entire Merck Manual on your iPhone. And 2009 brought plenty of optimistic health news, such as the development of fun body monitoring devices ; scientists further finessing the increasingly intricate movements that amputees can perform with prosthetic hands and fingers ; the introduction of a bra that, when taken off, could save your life ; and new research, however flimsy, that porn may not be so bad for you after all.

A YouTube video suggesting that face recognition cameras installed in HP laptops cannot detect black faces has had over one million views. The short movie, uploaded earlier this month, features "Black Desi" and his colleague "White Wanda". When Wanda, a white woman, is in front of the screen, the camera zooms to her face and moves as she moves. But when Desi, a black man, does the same, the camera does not respond by tracking him. The clip is light-hearted in tone but is titled "HP computers are racist". "HP has been informed of a potential issue with the facial-tracking software included on some of its systems, which appears to occur when insufficient foreground lighting is available," an HP spokesman told BBC News. "We take this seriously and are looking into it with our partners."

US scientists believe they have uncovered one of the mechanisms that enables the brain to form memories. Synapses - where brain cells connect with each other - have long been known to be the key site of information exchange and storage in the brain. But researchers say they have now learnt how molecules at the site of the synapse behave to cement a memory. It is hoped the research, published in Neuron, could aid the development of drugs for diseases like Alzheimer's. The deteriorating health of the synapses is increasingly thought to be a feature of Alzheimer's, a disease in which short-term memory suffers before long-term recollections are affected. " Scientists have been perplexed for some time as to why, when synapses are strengthened, you have the degradation of proteins going on side by side with the synthesis of new proteins " Kenneth Kosik University of California Santa Barbara A strong synapse is needed for cementing a memory, and this process involves making new proteins. But how exactly the body controls this process has not been clear. Now scientists at the University of California Santa Barbara say their laboratory work on rats shows the production of proteins needed to cement memories can only happen when the RNA - the collection of molecules that take genetic messages from the nucleus to the rest of the cell - is switched on. Until it is required, the RNA is paralysed by a " silencing" molecule - which itself contains proteins. When an external signal comes in - for example when one sees something interesting or has an unusual experience - the silencing molecule fragments and the RNA is released. " This interesting development could give a greater understanding of the memory loss experienced by people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia and lead to new treatments " Rebecca Wood Alzheimer's Research Trust Kenneth Kosik of the university's neuroscience research institute said: "One reason why this is interesting is that scientists have been perplexed for some time as to why, when synapses are strengthened, you have the degradation of proteins going on side by side with the synthesis of new proteins. "So we have now resolved this paradox. We show that protein degradation and synthesis go hand in hand. The degradation permits the synthesis." Identifying the proteins the brain needs in order to cement the memory could ultimately have benefits for those suffering from memory disorders. Rebecca Wood, head of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, said: "Scientists say they have studied nerve cells in the laboratory and learnt more about how specific proteins may have a role in areas of the brain that transmit messages and help us store memories. " The health of synapses and their activity levels is becoming an important and interesting focus of research " Professor Julie Williams "This interesting development could give a greater understanding of the memory loss experienced by people with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia and lead to new treatments." The most recent projections suggest 115 million people across the globe will suffer from dementia by 2050. Julie Williams, professor of psychological medicine at Cardiff University, said: "Our increasing understanding of genetic risk factors in Alzheimer's is pointing to the synapses so any new study in this area is welcome. "Alzheimer's is a complicated disease and it is early days, but the health of synapses and their activity levels is becoming an important and interesting focus of research."