February 2015

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.

Editor’s Note: It looks like we stumped you. None of the puzzler guesses were correct, but our winner was the closest to getting it right. He guessed it was a sanitary sewer clean-out pipe, and that’s what the photo looks like, according to our source at Facilities Maintenance and Engineering. Please continue reading for the correct puzzler solution. 

By Ashley DeVine, Staff Writer

By Robin Meckley, Contributing Writer, and Tracie Frederick, Guest Writer

Open access and public access—are they different concepts or are they the same? What do they mean for the researchers at NCI at Frederick?

“Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the Internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder,” according to an open access website maintained by Peter Suber, director, Harvard Open Access Project. 

By Ken Michaels, Guest Writer

Editor’s note: Because Presidents’ Day is celebrated in February, we are honoring one of our nation’s greatest presidents and most skillful communicators.

In a recent article in the Poster, I mentioned that the words “I have a dream” are not to be found in the manuscript that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took to the lectern on Aug. 28, 1963, during the celebrated March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom demonstration. When he sensed that his prepared speech was missing the mark, he resorted to the “dream” speech, which he had given several times previously, albeit not on the national stage. The result was the speech now considered the greatest American speech of the 20th century.

By Carolynne Keenan, Contributing Writer

Frederick County Public School students have a unique opportunity—a chance to get a real-world, hands-on experience in biomedical science and biotechnology before they even graduate from high school, thanks to the Frederick County Career and Technology Center (CTC).

Several years ago, the CTC established its biomedical sciences program with a curriculum from Project Lead the Way (PLTW), a nonprofit, nationwide developer of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in elementary, middle, and high schools.