At age 15, Baltimore resident Autumn Simms seems to already have life figured out.

The soft-spoken tenth grade student at the private Indian Creek Upper School in Crownsville, Maryland is a standout on the school’s equestrian, soccer, basketball and lacrosse teams. She is a mainstay on the Dean’s List.

“I stay on top of my work so that I have time to do everything else,” said Autumn, whose equestrian team recently completed its season at the Interschool Horse Show Invitational, where only the best in the sport are invited to compete.

At the event, Autumn was awarded the Casey Sportsmanship Award, which is presented to just one horse rider from all of 32 schools involved.

“That’s my baby,” said family friend and Autumn’s long time caretaker, Shirley Griffin. “She’s a wonderful girl who is not into the makeup and other things that young girls usually are into. Her mother is really trying to give her a good balance in life and she has responded,” Griffin said.

Tina Simms, Autumn’s mother, said her daughter has always been, “The model kid.” Simms said her daughter had always shown an interest in sports while maintaining great grades. Autumn’s love of equestrian riding developed only a couple of years ago, according to her mother. 

“I’d like to take credit but Autumn has such a mild demeanor and a go-getter attitude,” Simms said. “The equestrian interest began when her father gave her horses and she wanted to ride. We took her to summer camp and her dream never went away, so she joined the team,” she said.

While Autumn also thrives in other team sports, her success in equestrian riding could be considered surprising on many fronts.

African American equestrians are a minority within a minority, as horsemanship remains an interest among just a few people— primarily white. Further, few women make it to the top of equine sports.

After the turn of the 20th century, racing started to become a higher profile sport and blacks were mostly seen only as stable help, according to historians.

The last black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby, Jimmy Winkfield who won in both 1901 and 1902, left the country for Europe and a lucrative racing career.

“We know it’s not a sport that usually interests African Americans,” Griffin said. “But, Autumn is a special child, very special, and she has this wonderful gift.”

Despite obstacles, some African Americans have quietly succeeded in the sport. For more than 10 years, Virginia Mealing Plancke was involved in equestrian events. From 1989 to 1991, Mealing Plancke was a trainer for the C.W. Post College Equestrian Team in New York. She earned ribbons and placed in numerous jumper division shows and was the only African American in the Belgium European Equestrian Show during the 1993-1994 season.

Also, as recently as 2000, Marlon St. Julien became the first black jockey in 79 years to ride in the Kentucky Derby and he finished in seventh place.

Autumn said her father, Lester Simms, and her mother, are motivators and heroes to her. Asked what advice she would give to other teens, Autumn didn’t hesitate to offer sound guidance.

“Always plan with a schedule,” she said. “Put your academics first and you are more likely to excel.

Washington, D.C.— Sudha Sharma, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Howard University College of Medicine, recently published new findings that make a significant contribution to the understanding of genomic instability, including those found in cancer. Her research could place scientists on a path to design more effective cancer treatment strategies.  

New research by Sharma and her laboratory associates published in Molecular Cancer shows how RECQ1, a protein that is present in human cells, is recruited to hotspots of DNA damage that are particularly sensitive to DNA breaks in cancer cells.

In another study, published in PLOS ONE, Sharma’s lab, which is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the National Institutes of Health, describes how RECQ1 protein repairs breaks in the DNA, which is essential for maintaining the integrity of our genetic material.

In order for many cancer drugs to be effective, they must induce damage to the DNA and cause breaks in chromosomes, Sharma explained.  RECQ1 interferes with this process by repairing those breaks, her research suggests. Citing her work, scientists from another study, published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, are discussing the possibility of blocking RECQ1, thus making the cancer drugs work better. 

“I am very excited about our findings, and it would be wonderful if our research could ultimately help the lives of those with cancer” Sharma said. 

Despite medical advances, cancer is a disease that too often inflicts a sense of powerlessness on those who are threatened by it. However, as the Oscar-winning actress and director Angelina Jolie has just reminded us, women who have a genetic predisposition to develop breast cancer need not be paralyzed by fear or a sense of helplessness.

As the carrier of an uncommon “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which her doctors estimated gives her an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer; Jolie chose to have a preventive double mastectomy and reconstruction.

In an eloquent essay in the New York Times to raise awareness and promote gene testing, she says the decision, though hard, was the right one for her and her six children, dramatically cutting her risk. Happily, most women do not face so daunting a choice. Relatively few have the gene. Other less radical treatment options include intensive screening and preventive medications. For most, the best prevention is awareness, a healthy lifestyle and good medical care.

Still, Jolie’s celebrity status, her decision and her openness about it make a powerful statement that women have choices, that they should take control of their health, and that family and health trump vanity. “I do not feel any less of a woman,” she writes. “I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear that they will lose me to breast cancer.”

The revelation that Internal Revenue Service agents gave extra scrutiny to Tea Party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt, nonprofit status should offend all Americans. Back in school, many of us learned the legal axiom that the power to tax is the power to destroy.

The power of the federal tax agency means it must avoid political bias. That the IRS appears not to have done so makes this the first serious scandal of the Obama administration. The specter of government intrusion looms even larger because of unrelated reports this week that the Justice Department secretly obtained telephone records of Associated Press journalists. The department hasn't said what it was looking for but there can be no excuse for this infringement on an independent press.

In the IRS case, however deep the malfeasance or mismanagement runs, and whether or not it involves Obama and his appointees, it demands a full and free investigation and those responsible must be held accountable.

In a hyperpartisan era, people have new standards for judging when Washington controversies cross the line into real scandals. A case in point is the controversy that has, for eight months now, bid for wider public recognition as a full-fledged scandal: the deadly attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya and the administration's statements about it.

Republicans' allegations of a cover-up are too easily belittled by Democrats as dirty politics designed to sink Obama and undermine former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential chances. Amid the Republican-Democrat back-and-forth, most people whose views are not dictated by partisan loyalty have yet to see the incident as much worse than a tragic security failure and clumsy spin.

By contrast, any American can see the scandal in the IRS case. The administration's supporters should not be allowed to get away with shrugging off any of this as merely a symptom of the "second-term curse" that has found a string of re-elected presidents beset by scandals and catastrophes. The IRS-Tea Party matter is a self-created administration crisis.

It is simple stupidity, or worse if the Obama administration played a role, through action or inaction, in the IRS targeting groups opposed to the president. Monday, Obama called the practice "outrageous" and said he learned of it via news reports late last week. However, the question of what officials knew, and when, must be answered. Top IRS officials seem to have hidden the facts from Congress.

Both the IRS-Tea Party and Justice Department-AP matters must be subjects of investigation from outside the Obama administration. These practices violate basic principles of how American should be governed.