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.

The Elementary Outreach Program (EOP) is looking for volunteers for the 2013–2014 school year. This program is designed to bring science into the classrooms of Frederick County students in grades 1 through 5. You’ll have a chance to work with small groups of children, presenting hands-on lessons that are coordinated with the school curriculum. Volunteer teams in each grade are scheduled to visit four schools in Frederick County this year.

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.

Leidos Biomedical Research reclaimed the Defelice Cup trophy from NCI at the eighth annual Ronald H. Defelice golf tournament, held October 14. The final score was 15–7, with Leidos Biomed tying the series 4 to 4. Fourteen players on each team battled it out at Rattlewood golf course in Mount Airy, Md.

The ping of an aluminum bat off a ball or the thump of a pop-up fly ball caught in a glove are two sounds familiar to baseball fans. Slow-pitch softball sounds—like those in the August game between mixed teams of NCI and Leidos Biomedical Research (formerly SAIC-Frederick) players—are similar.