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Features | A Few Words about Words

In Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet,” Polonius inquires of the prince, “What do you read, my lord?” Not at all pleased with what he’s reading, Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words.” I have previously described the communication model in which a sender encodes a message and then sends it via some channel (or medium) to a receiver, who decodes the message and, ideally, understands what was sent. Surely the most common way of encoding a message is in choosing the most appropriate words for the listener or reader.

Community | New Hires at the National Cancer Institute at Frederick

Forty-nine people joined the facility in September and October 2013.

Health & Safety | Finding Your Serenity in Stressful Times

In these uncertain times, when work can be stressful, disquieting, or downright upsetting, taking an hour on Thursday evenings to work out job- and life-induced twists can provide a welcome element of serenity.

Community | Green Team Hosts Plant Swap to Encourage Gardening

What started out as a way for Howard Young, Ph.D., to thin out his garden last fall turned into the NCI at Frederick Green Team’s Plant Swap. The group held its Fall Plant Swap on October 24, encouraging all members of the Fort Detrick community to pick up a free plant or swap a plant of theirs for another. “Those who love to garden introduce others to the joy of gardening,” said Dolores Winterstein, a member of the Green Team and the coordinator of the Fall Plant Swap.

Science & Technology | New Approach for Producing and Purifying IL-15 Heterodimers That Have Potent Immune Effect

Cytokines are proteins that play a crucial role in the human immune system by delivering messages that trigger the activation of immune cells to fight off attacks from viruses or other invaders. Cristina Bergamaschi, Ph.D., NCI Center for Cancer Research, has been studying the mechanism of expression and function of a cytokine known as interleukin-15 (IL-15) for the last five years, in collaboration with Elena Chertova, Ph.D., and other researchers in the Retroviral Protein Chemistry Core of the AIDS and Cancer Virus Program, Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.