In remarks at the Forum for the Future in Marrakech on November 3, Secretary Clinton announced new initiatives to bolster science and technology collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. The Secretary named Dr. Bruce Alberts, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, and Dr. Ahmed Zewail as the first three U.S. Science and Technology Envoys and announced that the State Department will expand positions for environment, science, technology, and health officers at U.S. embassies.

On September 8th, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council held a symposium to release a new report emphasizing the importance of introducing engineering into K-12 education. The report examines the status and nature of efforts to teach engineering in U.S. schools. California Teacher Advisory Council (Cal TAC) member Pete Arvedson attended the symposium to participate in the discussion with the committee.

The past year has been challenging for California. The state's record budget deficits forced it to slash many important programs. Our hopes for addressing California's serious problems with its physical, social, and economic infrastructure- science and math education, healthcare, water and energy supplyhave been deferred. Science and technology are at the core of California's economic strength, and the state must use them to remedy the growing shortcomings in our infrastructure.

CCST Council member Alice Huang discussed science policy at the state and national level in an address to the Council in October. Having completed the second of two terms as a CCST Council member, she will assume the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in February 2010. She was designated President-Elect at the February 2009 AAAS meeting. "I am sorry to be leaving CCST, because it has been a very valuable experience," she told the Council.

The most recent CCST meeting, held on October 8 and 9 2009, focused on NASA's fiftieth anniversary. The dinner speaker was Elon Musk, founder, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, a company that is creating a new model - to develop launch vehicles that will ultimately reduce the cost and increase the reliability of space access and re-ignite humanity's efforts to explore and develop space.

This report describes current barriers to financing health information technology as a tool for health care delivery. An earlier version of this report was commissioned by the Governor's Health Information Technology Advisory Commission (HITFAC) and submitted to that body in May 2008. Principal researchers, Dr. Robert H. Miller, PhD and his research team at the University of California, San Francisco, describe and analyze information obtained from September 2007 through early May 2008.