Ronald D. Dittemore, a 26-year NASA veteran, has announced his intention to step aside as the Space Shuttle Program Manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston to pursue other opportunities.

Dittemore, who has served as the Shuttle program manager for more than four years, will remain in his current position until the Columbia Accident Investigation Board finishes its investigation and a complete "Return to Flight" path has been established.

Dittemore made the announcement in Washington with Michael Kostelnik, Deputy Associate Administrator for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station Programs. Kostelnik praised Dittemore's dedication and professionalism.

Dittemore first joined NASA in 1977 as a propulsion systems engineer, responsible for the development and implementation of operations procedures for the Space Shuttle orbital maneuvering and reaction control systems.

In 1985, he was selected as a Space Shuttle Flight Director, responsible for the overall leadership and direction of Space Shuttle missions, as the leader of the flight control team located in the Mission Control Center.

In 1993, he joined the Space Shuttle Program Office as the Deputy Manager for the Space Shuttle Program Integration and Operations Office, responsible for the integration, engineering and operation of all Shuttle payloads. He also served as the Manager, Space Shuttle Program Integration, where he was responsible for the overall integration and conduct of Space Shuttle flights, including serving as chairman of the flight Mission Management Team.

In 1996, Dittemore was selected as the Manager, Space Shuttle Vehicle Engineering Office, where he directed the design, development, modification, certification, and test of the orbiter vehicle, flight software, and flight crew equipment. He was selected as Space Shuttle Program Manager in 1999. As Manager, Space Shuttle Program, Dittemore is responsible for the overall management, integration and operations of the Space Shuttle Program. This includes development and operations of all Space Shuttle elements, as well as the facilities, required to support ground processing and flight operations.

Dittemore graduated in 1970 from Medical Lake High School in Medical Lake, Washington; received a bachelor of science in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Washington in 1974 and a Master of Science degree in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from University of Washington in 1975.

As a fiber, spider silk is so desirable that scientists have spent decades trying to find a way to mimic it. A team at MIT has been tackling the problem from two directions.

Paula T. Hammond, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering's graduate students Greg Pollock and LaShanda James-Korley presented papers on the research at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society. The work is part of a collaborative effort between Hammond and Professor Gareth McKinley of the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

The focus of the work is on creating materials that could create the high-strength fibers needed for artificial tendons, specialty textiles and lightweight bullet-proof gear. A light, tough material like spider silk would be ideal. But unlike sheep or silkworms, spiders cannot be penned in together or raised as a group, making them difficult to domesticate. As a result, scientists' interest in producing artificial fibers with similar properties to spider silk.

Spider silk is known to be a polymer with two distinct alternating regions. One region is soft and elastic; the other forms small, hard crystallites. It is assumed that this unusual structure is largely responsible for spider silk's remarkable properties.

MIT researchers want to make a series of different synthetic polymers and study how changes in the chemical structures of the polymers affect the physical properties. This research is done in parallel with research focusing on processing techniques that will maintain the unusual properties of the materials produced.

Scientists at Nexia, a small startup company, have been able to harvest spider silk from the milk of genetically altered goats, but as Pollock explained, that type of solution does not solve the problem entirely.

James-Korley's work focuses on the soft segment of spider silk. It has been suggested that this soft part has two different regions, one of which is slightly harder than the other because the polymer fibers are partially aligned. If this idea is correct, spider silk actually has three different phases: hard, soft and intermediate. The hard segments anchor the partially aligned regions, holding them in place in a matrix of soft material.

James-Korley has been trying to produce materials with such a structure to test this hypothesis. She has been studying soft-segment polymers made with two different types of materials, hoping that the two materials will form separate phases, the way oil and water do when mixed. When her two-phased soft segments are combined with a hard segment, she will have a three-phase material that she hopes can imitate some of the properties of spider silk.

Pollock is studying a different structural element-the interface between the crystallites in spider silk and the soft region around them. How the interfacial material slides past the crystallites without pulling away from them may hold the key to spider silk's toughness.

He is trying to build hard, crystalline sections of polymer that include two different materials. When his polymer sections crystallize, one material will form the bulk of the crystallites and the other will form thin layers on the outside of the crystallites. The latter essentially forms the interface between the hard crystallites and the surrounding soft material. Pollock is hoping that by varying the types of materials he uses, he can study the effect of the interface material on the toughness of the overall polymer.

James-Korley and Pollock's work is part of a larger collaborative effort, which includes a new spinning process that may help create durable fibers from their polymeric materials. This process, called resin-spinning, was developed in the McKinley lab and is being studied in detail by graduate student Nikola Kojic.

The Africa Malaria Report, released by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says the death toll from malaria remains outrageously high - with more than 3000 African children dying daily. It also stresses that new effective anti-malarial drugs are not yet accessible to the majority of those who need them and that only a small proportion of children at risk of malaria are protected by highly effective insecticide-treated nets (ITNs). The report, officially launched by President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya in commemoration of Africa Malaria Day, gives a continent-wide picture of the struggle against the disease and highlights the urgent need to make effective anti-malarial treatment available to those most at risk.

An estimated 20 per cent of the world's population - mostly those living in the world's poorest countries - is at risk of contracting malaria. Malaria causes more than three hundred million acute illnesses and kills at least one million people every year. Ninety per cent of deaths due to malaria occur in Africa, south of the Sahara, and most deaths occur in children under the age of five. The illness kills an African child nearly every 30 seconds.

The Africa Malaria Report challenges the global community to step up the momentum by:
* Increasing global investment to support implementation of programmes to control malaria in endemic countries;
* According higher priority to malaria on the health agenda of endemic countries;
* Encouraging greater private sector involvement in the national supply and distribution of quality antimalarial drugs, and insecticide treated nets;
* Ensuring the availability of the new generation of highly effective antimalarial combination drug treatments to populations at risk;

The Africa Malaria Report acknowledges the contribution of global efforts to the substantial progress already made by a number of countries that have adopted cost effective strategies to fight the disease with greater focus on the most vulnerable - women and young children.

The good news is that ITNs offer substantial protection against malaria. The proper use of ITNs combined with prompt treatment for malaria at community level can reduce malaria transmission by as much as 60% and the overall young child death rate by at least one fifth.

In Tanzania a three year community pilot project has seen the proportion of infants sleeping under ITNs rise from 10% to 50% and the child death rate fall by more than 25%. Similarly a community programme in Zambia achieved net coverage of more than 60% of individuals at risk.

Community health workers and mothers of young children in more than ten districts in Uganda have been trained to recognize the symptoms of malaria and seek immediate treatment as part of a home-based approach to the management of malaria. This approach encourages the active participation of local medicine sellers and the pharmaceutical industry in malaria control efforts. Interim results suggest a definite decline in the number of out-patient malaria cases in children under five. Ghana and Nigeria have also introduced this home-based approach.

Roll Back Malaria (RBM) was launched in 1998 with the declared objective of halving the global burden of malaria by 2010. Its founding partners - the United Nations Development Program, UNICEF, The World Bank and WHO - agreed to share their expertise and resources in a concerted effort to tackle malaria worldwide, with a particular focus on Africa.

Following the Abuja summit, April 25 was declared "Africa Malaria Day", and a subsequent UN resolution declared 2001 - 2010 "The Decade to Roll Back Malaria, especially in Africa", giving prominence to malaria in the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals.

Of 44 countries that signed the Abuja Declaration in 2000, 25 endemic countries in Africa have submitted successful proposals to the Global Fund to fight AIDS Tuberculosis and Malaria for funding support to scale-up implementation of their national malaria control plans.

Eighteen endemic countries have now reduced or eliminated taxes and tariffs on anti-malarial products including mosquito nets and insecticides - helping to make these essential products more accessible.

As a result of ongoing assessments as to the nature of outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing and Shanxi Province, China, and in Toronto, Canada, WHO is now recommending, as a measure of precaution, that persons planning to travel to these destinations consider postponing all but essential travel. This temporary advice, which is an extension of travel advice previously issued for Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, will be reassessed in three weeks time. Cases in travelers have been epidemiologically linked to travel to mainland China and Hong Kong; Singapore; and Hanoi, Vietnam.


Following global alerts about cases of SARS issued by WHO on March 12 and 15, national authorities have heightened surveillance for suspect and probable cases. In many countries, prompt detection and isolation of initial cases have prevented further transmission altogether or held additional cases to a very small number.

On March 27, WHO recommended additional measures aimed at preventing the travel-related spread of SARS. These recommended measures, which include screening of air passengers departing from certain areas, continue to apply. On April 2, WHO recommended that persons traveling to Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and Guangdong Province, China consider postponing all but essential travel. This temporary recommendation has been reassessed daily and remains in effect.

Subsequent information from the Chinese government about the magnitude of the SARS outbreaks in Beijing and Shanxi Province has been carefully reviewed by WHO. This assessment has considered the magnitude of the outbreak, including both the number of prevalent cases and the daily number of new cases, the extent of local chains of transmission, and evidence that travellers are becoming infected while in one area and then subsequently exporting the disease elsewhere. On the basis of this assessment, WHO is extending its 2 April travel advice to include Beijing and Shanxi Province.

Using the same criteria, WHO has assessed the SARS situation in Toronto, Canada. The outbreak in this area has continued to grow in magnitude and has affected groups outside the initial risk groups of hospital workers, their families and other close person-to-person contacts, although all the cases reported have identified links to known SARS cases. In addition, a small number of persons with SARS, now in other countries in the world, appear to have acquired the infection while in Toronto. On the basis of this information, WHO is also including Toronto in the extension of its SARS-related travel advice.

This advice will be re-examined in three weeks time, which is twice the maximum incubation period.

The WHO travel advice is issued in order to protect public health and reduce opportunities for further international spread. SARS is a new disease, first recognized in late February, that has spread along the routes of international air travel. As of 22 April, a cumulative total of 3947 cases had been reported from 25 countries on five continents. Precautionary measures aim to reduce the impact of SARS and contain the disease while it is still in a relatively early stage.

The SARS situation is assessed on a daily basis to determine whether other areas need to be included in the travel advice and if additional precautionary measures are required.

Representatives of the Philippines government reported the nation's first deaths from SARS on April 25 as Taiwan authorities quarantined over 1,100 doctors, nurses and patients in a hospital.

The senior health officials, meeting in Kuala Lumpur, were trying to standardize the way they tackle SARS -- for which there is no known cure -- and preparing the ground for a Bangkok SARS summit of the 10 ASEAN members and China next Tuesday.

SARS, a respiratory infection with a mortality rate of about six percent, has killed at least 276 people and infected about 4,800 in 25 nations, and has hit Asia particularly hard.

It is spread by droplets from sneezing and coughing but can also be transmitted by touching contaminated objects such as elevator buttons.

Measures the region's health officials are likely to propose on Saturday at the end of their two-day meeting include strict pre-travel checks at air and sea ports, travel bans on suspected SARS sufferers, and the possibility of sharing laboratories to identify the virus.

But the Philippines reported its first two deaths from the virus, striking fear into a country reliant on billions of dollars sent home each year by its thousands of nurses and domestic helpers working abroad, many of them in SARS hotspots.

Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit said the Philippine dead were a nursing assistant visiting home from Toronto and her father.

Taiwanese authorities sealed the Taipei Municipal Ho Ping Hospital on Thursday after more than 25 suspected SARS cases were discovered and more than 1,100 doctors, nurses, patients and visitors will have to stay there for up to two weeks.

Taiwan, which has reported only 49 probable SARS cases despite strong business and ethnic ties with China and Hong Kong, added to existing precautions by suspending landing visas for Hong Kong residents for one month from midnight on Friday.

In Hong Kong the acting head of the Hospital Authority, Ko Wing-man, offered to resign for not doing enough to stop the spread of SARS, but a U.S. health expert advising the government said that any health authority "will be hard pressed to deal with something like this."

Senior Canadian officials challenged a travel warning from WHO to avoid Toronto, as well as Hong Kong, Beijing and China's Guangdong and Shanxi provinces, but WHO Director General Gro Harlem Brundtland said it would stay in place.

Toronto insists the SARS outbreak is coming under control, a stand backed by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which said the risk of contracting SARS was no greater in Canada than in any other nation with cases of the disease.

In the United States, the virus was found in six more patients, bringing the U.S. total to 245 suspected cases, but only 39 were probable cases, CDC head Dr Julie Gerberding said. All but two had traveled to Asia or Toronto, suggesting that SARS was not spreading freely, the CDC said.

The WHO said Vietnam, with 63 cases and five deaths, had managed to control SARS through aggressive measures. Some other countries with outbreaks had managed to stop the spread.

(Article information from the BBC Online)

The government has brought in emergency measures to quarantine people with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), but denied rumors that it planned to invoke martial law.

The Chinese Government has announced five more deaths from SARS, while six more people have died in Hong Kong - taking the death toll to 115 each.

Asian health officials meeting in Malaysia have proposed emergency measures aimed at slowing the spread of SARS, which has killed more than 260 people worldwide.

In Beijing, a second major hospital treating more than 100 SARS patients has been sealed off, following similar action at a hospital on Thursday.

A doctor inside Ditan Hospital, a major center for the control of infectious diseases, told the BBC no-one was allowed to enter or leave the building. However, some medical staff were reported to have gone home.

A Beijing health official said a further 4,000 individuals believed to have had contact with suspected SARS sufferers had been ordered to stay at home under quarantine.
All migrant workers and students have been ordered to remain in Beijing, but train stations remained packed on Friday with people trying to leave.

Reports suggest that the SARS virus is causing a growing sense of panic among the public, with people stockpiling rice, salt and cooking oil - forcing prices to rise sharply.

Of the five new deaths announced by the Chinese health ministry on Friday, three were in Beijing. That takes Beijing's death toll to 42.

The ministry also announced 180 new cases in eight provinces across China.

As well as the six new deaths in Hong Kong, the government there reported 22 new cases of SARS.

The government also said a further 47 patients had recovered, bringing the total number of discharged patients to 614.

There have also been deaths in Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia. The Philippines recorded its first two deaths from the virus on Friday.

Taiwan has imposed a strict quarantine at a hospital in Taipei, with about 1,000 doctors, nurses and patients ordered to stay put for up to two weeks.

It has sparked anger among medical staff, with some of them reportedly refusing to treat patients suspected as having the virus.

The virus, which has no known cure, is believed to have emerged in China's southern Guangdong province last November.

A WHO expert visiting China, Dr Wolfgang Preiser, has said the city of Shanghai may have been far luckier than Beijing in escaping the worst of the SARS outbreak, even though he believes there are tens of cases. There also seems to be less of a public panic in Shanghai.

(Article information from Reuters)

Since so many do not have access to quality health care, SARS could be a crisis unless decisive action is taking was the message that Indian doctors brought to the government.

The country of more than one billion has reported only four cases but a situation with a wedding has made the members of the Indian Medical Association nervous.

It seems that a woman went against doctors' advice and went ahead with the marriage ceremony after testing positive for SARS. Twenty-five guests were quarantined and the bride went to the hospital, but the groom stayed for the reception and spent time with the 300 guests before being placed into quarantine.

The government is making airports its first line of defense . Doctors wearing masks used for nuclear or biological attacks will screen suspect passengers who must fill in forms saying where they came from and if they have SARS-like ailments.
The government also set up an action group but stopped shy of making SARS a notifiable disease which would let officials move legally against patients failing to cooperate in treatment.

Experts say that's not enough and India is not ready to tackle SARS that can be spread by coughs and sneezes and which has a 5-6 percent death rate. India has only two SARS testing labs which are already complaining of overload.
Still, government officials say they believe India has a good chance of avoiding the fate of giant neighbor China, where SARS has killed 115 people and infected 2,601. They're also hoping the searing summer heat may kill the virus.

Unlike China, which concealed the extent of the virus for months by which time it had spread via travelers to 25 nations, government officials say India is being open in reporting the disease and tracking down SARS suspects.

But while nations like China and Singapore can clamp strict quarantines, such measures are far harder to impose in chaotic India.

Last weekend, The Asian Age newspaper said a SARS suspect bribed his way out of a New Delhi airport isolation room by paying 1,000 rupees ($21). The government denied the report.