The pitfalls and promise of liquid biopsies for diagnosing and treating solid tumors in children : a review

Cell-free DNA profiling using patient blood is emerging as a non-invasive complementary technique for cancer genomic characterization. Since these liquid biopsies will soon be integrated into clinical trial protocols for pediatric cancer treatment, clinicians should be informed about potential applications and advantages but also weaknesses and potential pitfalls. Small retrospective studies comparing genetic alterations detected in liquid biopsies with tumor biopsies for pediatric solid tumor types are encouraging. Molecular detection of tumor markers in cell-free DNA could be used for earlier therapy response monitoring and residual disease detection as well as enabling detection of pathognomonic and therapeutically relevant genomic alterations. Conclusion: Existing analyses of liquid biopsies from children with solid tumors increasingly suggest a potential relevance for molecular diagnostics, prognostic assessment, and therapeutic decision-making. Gaps remain in the types of tumors studied and value of detection methods applied. Here we review the current stand of liquid biopsy studies for pediatric solid tumors with a dedicated focus on cell-free DNA analysis. There is legitimate hope that integrating fully validated liquid biopsy-based innovations into the standard of care will advance patient monitoring and personalized treatment of children battling solid cancers

A complete characterization of equilibria in an intrinsic common agency screening game

We characterize the complete set of equilibrium allocations to an intrinsic common agency screening game as the set of solutions to self-generating optimization programs. We provide a complete characterization of equilibrium outcomes for regular environments by relying on techniques developed elsewhere for aggregate games and for the mechanism design delegation literature. The set of equilibria include those with non-differentiable payoffs and discontinuous choices, as well as equilibria that are smooth and continuous in types. We identify one equilibrium, the maximal equilibrium, which is the unique solution to a self-generating optimization program with the largest (or "maximal") domain, and the only equilibrium that is supported with bi-conjugate (i.e., least-concave) tariffs. The maximal equilibrium exhibits a n-fold distortion caused by each of the n principal's non-cooperative behavior in over-harvesting the agent's information rent. Furthermore, in any equilibrium, over any interval of types in which there is full separation, the agent's equilibrium action corresponds to the allocation in the maximal equilibrium. Under reasonable conditions, the maximal equilibrium maximizes the agent's information rent within the class of equilibrium allocations. When the principals' most-preferred equilibrium allocation differs from the maximal equilibrium, we demonstrate that the agent's choice function exhibits an interval of bunching over the worst agent types, and elsewhere corresponds with the maximal allocation. The optimal region of bunching trades off the principals' desire to constrain inefficient n-fold marginalizations of the agent's rent against the inefficiency of pooling agent types

Personal computer use at Navy Field Activities: a productivity study

In the past, corporations justified investment in office automation (OA) by vague claims of increased productivity. Now, managers are reevaluating their productivity measurement systems in an effort to identify productivity gains resulting from OA. The purpose of this thesis is to present a methodology for determining the impact of OA on office productivity. This study examined the productivity of the Standard Automated Contracting System for Federal Agencies (SACONS), in a before/after quasi-experimental design that measured outputs (volume, quality of work), inputs (staff size, grade structure, overtime usage), and by-product social effects (morale, teamwork) using archival data. This framework, developed in a previous SACONS study, is used to analyze the strength of SACONS software. The results of this study were confounded by external events that adversely affected our results. Only the quality of work measure (Procurement Action Lead Time), which was reduced by 13 percent, showed a significant productivity gain. Further study of SACONS is necessary to determine its impact on office productivityhttp://archive.org/details/personalcomputer00murpNAU.S. Navy (U.S.N.) authors