By Nancy Parrish, Staff Writer; photos by Richard Frederickson, Staff Photographer

Approximately 50 college students, professors, and high school teachers from Frederick County Public Schools gathered at Hood College for the second annual National Interagency Confederation for Biological Research (NICBR) Exploring Careers in a Scientific Environment Symposium (NECSES). The Feb. 13 event highlighted the wide range of scientific research as well as the educational and career opportunities available through NICBR partner organizations.

Your challenge is to correctly identify the item and its location from the picture below. Clue: It’s somewhere at the NCI campus at Frederick or Fort Detrick.

Win a framed photograph of the Poster Puzzler and have your photo featured on the Poster website by e-mailing your guess, along with your name, e-mail address, and daytime phone number, to poster@mail.nih.gov.

All entries must be received by Friday, May 15, 2015, and the winner will be drawn from all correct answers received by that date.

Good luck and good hunting!

By Carolynne Keenan, Contributing Writer

The R&W Club Frederick hosted a sewing party on Feb. 18 to give employees a chance to help sew pillowcases for children hospitalized for illnesses and cancer treatments. The nonprofit organization ConKerr Cancer provides the pillowcases to children across the country.

Melissa Porter, administrative manager, Office of Scientific Operations, NCI at Frederick, and vice chair of the R&W Club Frederick, said the event went well. While the turnout was lower than expected, 27 pillowcases were completed, she said.

By Frank Blanchard, Staff Writer; photos by Frank Blanchard and Richard Frederickson, Staff Photographer

Each day at 6 a.m. the lights pop on inside 18 buildings on the NCI at Frederick campus, illuminating the residential quarters for thousands of research mice. For the mice, it’s the end of their nocturnal day.  For their caretakers, however, the day has just begun.

By Ashley DeVine, Staff Writer, and Mark Wance, Guest Writer; photo by Richard Frederickson, Staff Photographer

Editor's note: This article was updated April 30, 2018.

Transferring big data, such as the genomics data delivered to customers from the Center for Cancer Research Sequencing Facility (CCR SF), has been difficult in the past because the transfer systems have not kept pace with the size of the data. However, the situation is changing as a result of the Globus project.

By Nancy Parrish, Staff Writer; photos by Richard Frederickson, Staff Photographer

Scientists who attended the 2015 NCI Intramural Scientific Investigators Retreat on Jan. 13 had a chance to discuss research results with other investigators from across the National Cancer Institute. And this year, they could also explore new possibilities for the future of their research.

By Jenna Seiss and Kylie Tomlin, Guest Writers, and Ashley DeVine, Staff Writer

Maryland residents face the possibility of dangerous winter weather each year—from icy conditions to frigid temperatures. You may be familiar with the different types of winter weather alerts issued by the National Weather Service (NWS), but do you know what each alert means?  

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Emergency Preparedness and Response website provides information on the different types of winter weather alerts.

By Carolynne Keenan, Contributing Writer

Sewing enthusiasts of all skill levels are invited to attend a sewing party hosted by the R&W Club Frederick on Feb. 18. Stop by the Building 549 Café Room between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to sew for a cause: help the club make pillowcases for ConKerr Cancer, a nonprofit organization that supports children in hospitals across the country.

By Carolynne Keenan, Contributing Writer

Other than the time of year, what do the following have in common: the leg lamp from the movie “A Christmas Story,” a compilation of silly holiday jokes, a gingerbread house, and Santa on a motorcycle?

All four were among the individual door winners for the Holiday Door Decorating Contest, held at NCI at Frederick in December. Employees dressed up their office doors, hallways, and even stairwells to participate. Entries for the contest included individual office doors as well as groups. Some employees even “decked the halls” of whole office buildings to participate.

By Frank Blanchard, Staff Writer

A first-of-its-kind drug is showing early promise in attacking certain lung cancers that are hard to treat because they build up resistance to conventional chemotherapy.

The drug, CO-1686, performed well in a preclinical study involving xenograft and transgenic mice, as reported in the journal Cancer Discovery. It is now being evaluated for safety and efficacy in Phase I and II clinical trials.