Search

This paper considers a supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer, who concern their respective profits as well as consumer welfare. Each firm's objective is modelled as a weighted sum of its profit and consumer surplus, with the weight on consumer surplus representing the concern level of the firm. We first examine a push supply chain where the manufacturer determines the wholesale price and the retailer determines the order quantity. We derive the optimal decisions and investigate the impact of the firms' consumer surplus consideration on the interactive decisions of the supply chain members and the overall performance of the supply chain. We show that a higher level of retailer's consumer concern does not necessarily lead to higher consumer surplus because her concern on consumers may be exploited by the manufacturer to improve his objective; and the manufacturer's concern on consumers may not benefit the retailer in terms of her profit, especially when the manufacturer's concern level is relatively low. Nevertheless, compared to the for‐profit supply chain, concern on consumer surplus could be beneficial to both firms' profits as well as consumer surplus, inducing a "win‐win‐win" situation under certain conditions. Furthermore, as a social planner, the government seeks to optimize social welfare by adopting subsidy policies, and we examine two types of intervention policies, that is, subsidizing firms and subsidizing consumers. We show that when subsidizing firms, government's quantity‐based subsidy is always more cost‐effective than sales‐based subsidy. As the firms' concern levels become higher or the demand uncertainty becomes lower, subsidizing consumers can achieve higher social welfare than subsidizing firms. Moreover, we examine the impact of the government's budget constraint and concern level on consumer surplus, and extend the analysis to a pull supply chain to show the robustness of the major findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With rapid development of live-streaming e-commerce, an increasing number of firms are collaborating with live-streamers (e.g., online influencers and celebrities) to host online live-shows for selling their products. To reduce the firm's risk and motivate it to stock more, live-streamers can commit a minimum sales volume and/or the effort devoted to attracting fans and promoting the upcoming live-show. In this article, we study the roles of such sales and effort commitments on the performance of a "supply chain" in which a seller sells its product via a live-streamer. Product demand at the live-show is random while depending on the live-streamer's pre-show effort and the seller needs to decide the amount of inventory for sale at the live-show. We consider three scenarios, in which the live-streamer makes sales-only, effort-only, and hybrid commitments, and compare the decisions and profits of both parties. We show that the commitment on sales volume or effort is mutually beneficial to the seller and the live-streamer. Moreover, the hybrid commitment can motivate the seller to stock more inventory and induce more effort from the live-streamer compared to sales-only or effort-only commitment. The live-streamer always prefers the hybrid commitment whereas the seller may prefer the sales-only commitment, for example, when the penalty is at a medium level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many high-value experience goods, such as pianos and Chinese zithers, are usually characterized by uncertain future values. As such, a portion of customers (called 'consumers') may hesitate to buy the product because they are unsure of the product's actual value and/or they may expect to buy the product at a lower price in the future. Moreover, the fluctuating future value creates arbitrage opportunities for another group of customers (called 'speculators') who may benefit from stocking up a product and reselling it at a higher price at a future time. Considering a firm that sells a limited number of high-value experience goods over two periods, this paper investigates the profitability of a rent-to-own (R2O) contract, under which a consumer can return the product in the future period (e.g. when it turns out to be inappropriate) or buy the product at the realised future price. We study the optimal pricing decisions involved in the R2O contract for two scenarios. In the base model, the uncertain future price is exogenously given, and in the extended model, the future price is endogenously determined by the firm and speculators. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the value of R2O contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been challenging for firms to effectively manage demand when they release products of one generation after another one. Motivated by the observations from the smartphone industry, this paper investigates the effectiveness of two demand management strategies in the presence of a product rollover: the upgrade program and price markdown policy. Under an upgrade program, a firm allows customers to upgrade their on‐hand product to a new generation product that will be released in a future time. Under a markdown pricing policy, the firm offers a discount for the currently available product so as to induce waiting customers to make immediate purchases. The two demand management strategies target different groups of customers and have distinct impacts on customers' choices. Starting from the time‐varying choice behavior of a heterogeneous group of customers, we study the optimal pricing decisions involved in the two strategies. Specifically, when customers are myopic in the sense that they only make a one‐time purchasing decision upon arrival, we show that the firm should offer the upgrade program only when the innovation level of the new product is relatively high, and the firm's optimal upgrade price can increase over time. Generally, the firm should offer the upgrade program during the early selling period and adopt markdown pricing as the release date of the new product approaches. Numerical experiments reveal that the dynamic upgrade program and markdown pricing policies can help improve profit significantly. When customers are strategic in the sense that they can monitor the selling prices and make dynamic purchasing decisions until they buy a unit of product, we examine two coping strategies that a firm can adopt, and investigate how the strategic monitoring behavior may influence a firm's optimal selling decisions and profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By providing useful product information from the perspective of other buyers, online product/service reviews can help customers better evaluate the true quality of products and judge whether a product is a good fit for them. Based on online reviews, firms may improve product quality and/or adjust selling price to compete with other firms. In this study, we investigate the effects of online reviews on product quality and pricing decisions in a duopoly market that consists of two competing firms. Specifically, we consider a stylized two‐period model and study the equilibrium decisions based on a Nash game framework. In the base scenario, the selling prices are exogenously given, and the firms decide on the product quality across two periods to optimize their respective profits. We study the equilibrium decisions in the static setting (in which the product quality remains the same across the two periods) and in the dynamic setting (in which the product quality can be improved in the second period), respectively. In the extended scenario, the selling prices can be endogenously determined as well. For each scenario, we compare the equilibrium decisions under dynamic competition with those under static competition through theoretical analysis and numerical experiments, which uncover some interesting managerial insights regarding the impact of online reviews under competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opaque selling, in which a seller offers opaque goods (OGs), in addition to physical goods, has been shown to be an effective strategy to segment a market and improve the seller's profit. This article studies opaque selling with stochastic demand and fixed initial inventories of multiple products, where the seller dynamically controls the product offers and determines the product assignment to fulfill the demand for OGs over time. The problem is formulated as a stochastic dynamic program. Due to the curse of dimensionality, we study the fluid control problem that gives a time‐based fluid policy and a stationary probabilistic fulfillment strategy. We show that the fluid policy is asymptotically optimal when the arrival rates and initial inventory level are scaled up linearly. Furthermore, we propose a decomposition heuristic based on the corresponding fluid solution. The decomposition heuristic is shown to provide a tighter upper bound than the fluid control problem. Numerical study on a set of test instances illustrates the performance and efficacy of opaque selling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Histological staining methods for Cryptococcus identification vary in accuracy. This study aimed to investigate the clinical value of Grocott methenamine silver (GMS), periodic acid-Schiff (PAS), and Alcian blue (AB) staining in the diagnosis of pulmonary cryptococcosis (PC). Methods: From April 2004 to June 2021, the clinical and pathological data of 152 patients with PC were collected from the Department of Pathology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. The sensitivity and identifiability of GMS, PAS, and AB staining for histological diagnosis were systematically evaluated using statistical methods combined with the microscopic characteristics of PC cases. Results: Statistical analysis showed that the detection rates of GMS, PAS, and AB staining were 100.0% (152/152), 94.7% (144/152), and 81.6% (124/152), respectively. McNemar's test showed that the sensitivity of GMS was significantly higher than those of PAS (P = 0.008) and AB stains (P < 0.001). Both PAS and AB stains had obvious non-specific staining, which interfered with the detection of Cryptococcus , and increased diagnostic difficulties. In contrast, in GMS staining, Cryptococcus spores were prominent with a clean background and were clearly observed at low or medium power magnification, with the identifiability significantly better than those of PAS or AB staining. Conclusion: GMS staining had sensitivity up to 100%, and identifiability that was better than those of PAS and AB staining. GMS is the best method for histological diagnosis of PC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring in Dynamic Contract Design Adverse events are harmful to a firm or to the society. In many occasions, better effort in safeguarding a system can reduce the chance of such events. Consider the scenario in which a company (i.e., "principal") hires a subcontractor (i.e., "agent") to fulfill the duty of a safeguard. The agent's effort is unobservable, and the principal may, from time to time, conduct on-site monitoring. However, monitoring is often costly to the principal. In a dynamic environment in which the principal can use both monetary payments and monitoring to induce effort, how to optimally schedule them is a challenging and important problem. In "Optimal Monitoring Schedule in Dynamic Contracts," M. Chen, P. Sun, and Y. Xiao provide theoretical guidance on designing the optimal monitoring and payment schedules that always induce full effort from an agent. They formulate the contract design problem as a stochastic optimal control model and provide a complete characterization of the optimal solution. Their analysis suggests that the optimal dynamic contracts are simple to describe, easy to compute and implement, and intuitive to explain. Consider a setting in which a principal induces effort from an agent to reduce the arrival rate of a Poisson process of adverse events. The effort is costly to the agent and unobservable to the principal unless the principal is monitoring the agent. Monitoring ensures effort but is costly to the principal. The optimal contract involves monetary payments and monitoring sessions that depend on past arrival times. We formulate the problem as a stochastic optimal control model and solve the problem analytically. The optimal schedules of payment and monitoring demonstrate different structures depending on model parameters. Overall, the optimal dynamic contracts are simple to describe, easy to compute and implement, and intuitive to explain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade‐in programs have been widely adopted to enhance repeat purchase from replacement customers. Considering that a market consists of replacement and new segments, we study the joint and dynamic decisions on the selling price of new product (hereafter, "selling price") and the trade‐in price involved in the program. By adopting a vertical product differentiation choice model, we investigate two scenarios in this paper. In the base model, the manufacturer has sufficiently large production capacity to fulfill the customer demand. We characterize the structural properties of the joint pricing decisions and compare them with the optimal pricing policy under regular selling. We further propose a semi‐dynamic trade‐in program, under which the new product is sold at a fixed price and the trade‐in price can be adjusted dynamically. Numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the dynamic and semi‐dynamic trade‐in programs. In an extended model, we consider the scenario in which the manufacturer stocks a batch of new products in the beginning of the selling horizon and the inventory cannot be replenished. Following a revenue management framework, we characterize the structural properties with respect to time period and inventory level of new products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Zinc finger MYND (Myeloid, Nervy and DEAF-1)-type containing 8 (ZMYND8) is closely correlated with tumor proliferation and invasiveness. However, its prognostic value has not been estimated in colorectal cancer (CRC). OBJECTIVE: We aimed to elucidate the prognostic significance of ZMYND8 expression and the pN and pM classification supplemented by its expression in CRCs. METHODS: The candidate gene ZMYND8 is identified by TCGA database and GEO database, and then we retrospectively evaluated the status and prognostic significance of ZMYND8 expression of 174 patients with CRC. RESULTS: Online data showed high expression of ZMYND8 is closely correlated with worse overall survival. Our study revealed high expression of ZMYND8 in CRC patients was significantly associated with worse overall and disease-free survival (P < 0.05), and was an independently adverse prognostic factor for overall survival (P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (P = 0.001) by univariate and multivariate analysis. C-index to combined prognostic model containing the pN, pM classification supplemented by the status of ZMYND8 expression showed improved predictive ability comparing with the pN and pM classification model (C-index of 0.597 vs. 0.545, respectively). CONCLUSION: The combined prognostic model could improve the ability to determine the clinical outcome of patients with CRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade‐in programs for electronics products, e.g., mobile phones, have been increasingly popular. These programs target at customers (we call them "bargainers") who seek to salvage or upgrade their old devices. There are two widely adopted trade‐in options: trade‐in‐for‐upgrade and trade‐in‐for‐cash. In this study, we consider a firm who offers both trade‐in options, that is, a hybrid trade‐in program, to acquire old products, then refurbishes and resells them, together with new product over a finite selling horizon. The bargainers choose which option to trade in their products while new customers decide whether to buy a new product or a refurbished one. When the selling price of new product is exogenous, we derive the optimal trade‐in prices of old product and resale price of refurbished product. We show that the optimal trade‐in and resale policies are of a threshold‐type and trade‐in‐for‐upgrade should be offered with a premium refund (compared to trade‐in‐for‐cash) only in early periods of the selling horizon. We further consider two variants of the above base model. In the first extension, the new product has a fixed amount of initial inventory and is not replenishable during the selling horizon. In the second extension, the new product price can also be determined by the firm. Our numerical results demonstrate that the hybrid trade‐in program could generate significantly more profit than either upgrade‐only or cash‐only trade‐in program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Our aim was to perform a Bayesian network meta-analysis of short-term and long-term outcomes of open surgery (OS), laparoscopic surgery (LS), and robotic surgery (RS) after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) for rectal cancer. Methods: We searched randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and non-RCTs published up to October 2018 from PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science. We selected studies referencing the comparison between at least two of OS, LS, and RS. Short-term and long-term outcomes of different surgery procedures were evaluated. Mean differences or odds ratios and their 95% credible interval were pooled with Bayesian modeling. Results: In the network meta-analysis, 15 studies were identified through database searching and other sources that included three RCTs and nine non-RCTs enrolling 2360 patients. As for long-term outcomes, we did not find any significant difference among these surgery procedures after nCRT for rectal cancer in this network meta-analysis. As for short-term outcomes, no significant outcomes were obtained except for operative time, blood loss, length of incision, and time to pass first flatus. Our meta-analysis illustrated that RS had the longest operative time. However, LS had a significantly shorter operative time than RS, shorter incision than OS, shorter time to pass first flatus than OS, and less blood loss than OS. Conclusions: RS was regarded as the inferior surgery procedure after nCRT for rectal cancer. Meanwhile, LS might possibly be the most safe and feasible surgery procedure after nCRT for rectal cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customer cancellations and no‐shows have an important impact on the performance of an airline's revenue management system. In this study, we study airline network revenue management problems with customer cancellations and no‐shows, considering two types of demand models: independent‐demand and choice‐based‐demand models. In independent‐demand models, the booking request rates for different products are independent of the assortment of products offered by the airline (exogenous), whereas in choice‐based‐demand models they depend on the airline's assortment (endogenous). The stochastic problems of optimizing the booking policies for the two demand models are not tractable because of the high‐dimensional state space. Therefore, for each model, we use the corresponding deterministic, continuous‐time, and continuous‐state model, known as the fluid model. A booking policy based on the fluid solution can be implemented for the original stochastic, discrete model. This fluid policy is shown to be asymptotically optimal when the arrival rates become high and the seat capacities become large. In the independent‐demand setting, an optimal fluid solution can be computed by solving a convex optimization problem for which efficient algorithms exist, whereas for some choice‐based‐demand models, the fluid control problems are known to be intractable. We also develop mixed fluid policies for the independent‐demand setting, taking advantage of the real‐time booking state, to improve the performance over the fluid policy. In a factorial experiment of 20 small‐sized single‐leg problems, the revenue loss under one of the mixed fluid policies is demonstrated to be less than 1% of the optimal value for all problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the degree of infiltration of CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) including high and low density in lung sarcomatoid carcinoma (LSC) and their clinicopathological significance.Patients and methods: The density of CD8+ TILs in paraffin-embedded tissue sections from 100 LSC patients was detected by immunohistochemical staining, and the relationship of CD8+ TILs with clinicopathological features and prognosis was analyzed.Results: The chi-squared test showed that the degree of infiltration of CD8+ TILs was significantly correlated with the clinicopathological stage and T stage of LSC (P<0.05). The univariate analysis demonstrated that tumor size, clinicopathological stage, T stage, N stage, M stage, and CD8+ TILs are risk factors that affect prognosis of the patients (P<0.05). The mean overall survival (OS) of LSC patients with a high density of CD8+ TILs was 92.3 months, which was significantly higher than 31.2 months in patients with a low density of CD8+ TILs (P<0.05). Cox regression multivariate analysis confirmed that the density of CD8+ TILs was an independent prognostic factor for OS time of LSC patients (hazard ratio=0.455, P<0.05).Conclusion: CD8+ TILs could be used as an effective prognostic index for LSC patients, and a high density of CD8+ TILs in tumor tissue may predict a better outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In many applications, managers face the problem of replenishing and selling products during a finite time horizon. We investigate the problem of making dynamic and joint decisions on product replenishment and selling in order to improve profit. We consider a backlog scenario in which penalty cost (resulting from fulfillment delay) and accommodation cost (resulting from shortage at the end of the selling horizon) are incurred. Based on continuous‐time and discrete‐state dynamic programming, we study the optimal joint decisions and characterize their structural properties. We establish an upper bound for the optimal expected profit and develop a fluid policy by resorting to the deterministic version of the problem (ie, the fluid problem). The fluid policy is shown to be asymptotically optimal for the original stochastic problem when the problem size is sufficiently large. The static nature of the fluid policy and its lack of flexibility in matching supply with demand motivate us to develop a “target‐inventory” heuristic, which is shown, numerically, to be a significant improvement over the fluid policy. Scenarios with discrete feasible sets and lost‐sales are also discussed in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Limb-bud and heart (LBH) levels are correlated with adverse survival in several malignancies; however, their significance in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. The objective of this study was to determine the association between LBH status and clinical outcomes. Methods: We selected 226 patients with HCC who were treated surgically between 2003 and 2010 at a single academic center. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to detect the protein expression of LBH in HCC samples. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, Spearman's rank correlation, Kaplan-Meier plots, and the Cox proportional hazards regression model were used to analyze the data. Results: A high expression of LBH was detected in 20 (8.8%) of 226 HCC samples. Correlation analysis demonstrated that LBH in HCC was significantly correlated with aspartate aminotransferase (AST)/alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels and clinical stages (P,0.05). In the Kaplan-Meier analysis, the mean survival time of patients with low levels of LBH was longer than that for those with high levels of LBH (P,0.05). The 3-year overall survival rate was 20% for patients with HCC and high levels of LBH versus 67% for patients with HCC and low levels of LBH. In the multivariate analysis, AST/ALT level, clinical stage, tumor relapse, and the level of LBH were the independent prognostic factors for overall survival (P,0.05). Conclusion: Overexpression of LBH might contribute to the development and progression of HCC. LBH could be a novel prognostic marker for HCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study aimmed to evaluate the expression of p53-inducible RR small subunit 2 homologue (p53R2) in Lung sarcomatoid carcinoma (LSC) and its association with clinicopathological parameters and prognosis.Methods: In this study, clinicopathological factors and prognostic significance of the expression of p53R2 was investigated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in 100 cases of LSC.Results: The results showed that the expression of p53R2 was significantly correlated with clinical stage (P<0.05). But there was no statistically correlation with gender, age, smoking, tumor size, pT stage, pN stage, pM stage, therapy and relapse. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the expression of p53R2, clinical stage, pT stage, pN stage, pM stage and tumor size were closely related to patients' survival, and the analysis also revealed that patients with low expression of p53R2 had a longer overall survival than that with high expression (Mean overall survival: 84.8 months vs. 34.7 months, P<0.05). Further multivariate analysis indicated that the expression of p53R2 was identified as an independent prognostic factor in the prediction of the overall survival for patients with LSC (HR = 3.217, P<0.05).Conclusions: The expression of p53R2 was inversely associated with the proliferation and progression of LSC, and the results indicated that the high expression of p53R2 was an independent factor for unfavorable prognosis of patients with LSC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: p53R2 is a target of p53 gene, which is essential for DNA repair, mitochondrial DNA synthesis, protection against oxidative stress, chromosomal instability, chronic inflammation and tumorigenesis. This study is aimed to investigate the expression of ribonucleotide reductase (RR) subunit p53R2 in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and its significance in the prognosis.Methods: The expression levels of p53R2 in 201 patients with NPC were examined by immunohistochemical assay. The correlations of p53R2 expression and clinicopathological features of nasopharyngeal carcinoma patient were analysed by chi-square test. The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox multivariate regression model were used to analyze the prognostic significance of the patients with NPC.Results: Immunohistochemical results showed that p53R2 was positively expressed in 92.5% (186/201) of nasopharyngeal carcinoma and the high expression rate was 38.3% (77/201). Further analysis observed that the negative correlation between expression of p53R2 and pT status had statistical significance (P < 0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis found that the mean survival time of patients with high expression of p53R2 was 143.32 months, while the patients with low expression level of p53R2 was 121.63 months (P < 0.05). Cox regression analysis suggested that p53R2 protein expression could be used as an independent prognostic factor for nasopharyngeal carcinoma (P < 0.05).Conclusions: This study drew a conclusion that p53R2 could be used as a prognostic biomarker indicative of the favorable outcome for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic resonance imaging and other multifunctional diagnostic facilities, which are considered as scarce resources of hospitals, typically provide services to patients with different medical needs. This article examines the admission policies during the appointment management of such facilities. We consider two categories of patients: regular patients who are scheduled in advance through an appointment system and emergency patients with randomly generated demands during the workday that must be served as soon as possible. According to the actual medical needs of patients, regular patients are segmented into multiple classes with different cancelation rates, no-show probabilities, unit value contributions, and average service times. Management makes admission decisions on whether or not to accept a service request from a regular patient during the booking horizon to improve the overall value that could be generated during the workday. The decisions should be made by considering the cancelation and no-show behavior of booked patients as well as the emergency patients that would have to be served because any overtime service would lead to higher costs. We studied the optimal admission decision using a continuous-time discrete-state dynamic programming model. Identifying an optimal policy for this discrete model is analytically intractable and numerically inefficient because the state is multidimensional and infinite. We propose to study a deterministic counterpart of the problem (i.e., the fluid control problem) and to develop a time-based fluid policy that is shown to be asymptotically optimal for large-scale problems. Furthermore, we propose to adopt a mixed fluid policy that is developed based on the information obtained from the fluid control problem. Numerical experiments demonstrate that this improved policy works effectively for small-scale problems. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 287-304, 2016 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we consider an online retailer who sells two similar products (A and B) over a finite selling period. Any stock left at the end of the period has no value (like clothes going out of fashion at the end of a season). Aside from selling the products at regular prices, he may offer an additional option that sells a probabilistic good, 'A or B,' at a discounted price. Whenever a customer buys a probabilistic good, he needs to assign one of the products for the fulfillment. Considering the choice behavior of potential customers, we model the problem using continuous-time, discrete-state, finite-horizon dynamic programming. We study the optimal admission decisions and devise two scenarios, whose value functions can be used as benchmarks to evaluate the demand induction effect and demand dilution effect of probabilistic selling (PS). We further investigate an extension of the base MDP (Markov Decision Process) model in which the fulfillment of probabilistic sales is uncontrollable by the retailer. A special case of the extended model can be used as a benchmark to quantify the potential inventory pooling effect of PS. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted to evaluate the overall profit improvement, and the effects from adopting the PS strategy. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 61: 604-620, 2014 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This article considers a class of fresh-product supply chains in which products need to be transported by the upstream producer from a production base to a distant retail market. Due to high perishablility a portion of the products being shipped may decay during transportation, and therefore, become unsaleable. We consider a supply chain consisting of a single producer and a single distributor, and investigate two commonly adopted business models: (i) In the 'pull' model, the distributor places an order, then the producer determines the shipping quantity, taking into account potential product decay during transportation, and transports the products to the destination market of the distributor; (ii) In the 'push' model, the producer ships a batch of products to a distant wholesale market, and then the distributor purchases and resells to end customers. By considering a price-sensitive end-customer demand, we investigate the optimal decisions for supply chain members, including order quantity, shipping quantity, and retail price. Our research shows that both the producer and distributor (and thus the supply chain) will perform better if the pull model is adopted. To improve the supply chain performance, we propose a fixed inventory-plus factor (FIPF) strategy, in which the producer announces a pre-determined inventory-plus factor and the distributor compensates the producer for any surplus inventory that would otherwise be wasted. We show that this strategy is a Pareto improvement over the pull and push models for both parties. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted, which reveal some interesting managerial insights on the comparison between different business models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the optimal inventory and dynamic admission policies of two physical retailers who, besides selling through their traditional in-store channels, also act as drop-shippers for an online retailer (e-tailer). The e-tailer carries no inventory of its own and always turns to one of the two physical retailers for order fulfillment. The considered scenario is the one in which retailer 1 (R1) and retailer 2 (R2) act as the primary and secondary drop-shippers of the e-tailer, respectively. While trying to maximize their respective revenues, both retailers face the problem of whether or not to accept the e-tailer's order-fulfillment request. It is initially assumed that the initial inventory levels of each retailer are fixed and that R1 shares his inventory information with R2. By adopting a revenue management framework, the dynamic admission policies of both retailers are studied and it is shown that R1 and R2 should implement one-dimensional and two-dimensional threshold policies, respectively. The scenario in which R1 does not share his inventory information with R2 is considered. For this scenario two heuristic policies for R2 are proposed and they are compared to the optimal policy when information is shared. A detailed sensitivity analysis for varying parameter value is presented, which shows the impact of information sharing between the two retailers. Finally, the assumption of fixed initial inventory levels is relaxed and the optimal initial inventory levels of each retailer that maximize their expected profits are determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have demonstrated that C-C motif chemokine 14 (CCL14) plays an important role in the occurrence and development of cancer. However, the significance of CCL14 in the progression and prognosis of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) has not yet been reported. The standard EnVision procedure for tissue microarrays was used to evaluate the immunohistochemical expression of CCL14 protein in 154 patients with EOC who underwent tumor-debulking operations at the Central Cancer Department of Sun Yat-Sen University (Guangzhou, China) or Jiangmen Central Hospital (Jiangmen, China). The association between CCL14 expression and clinicopathological variables was assessed using the χ 2 test. For survival status of patients with EOC, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and a Cox multivariate regression model was used. Expression of CCL14 protein was significantly associated with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetric stage (P=0.014) and pN status(P=0.005). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that the survival time of patients with high expression of CCL14 was 136.1 months and that of patients with low expression of CCL14 was 98.9 months (P=0.026). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that CCL14 upregulation was associated with overall survival time (HR, 0.48; 95% CI, 0.261-0.896; P=0.021) and progression-free survival time (HR,0.437; 95% CI, 0.228-0.839; P=0.013). In conclusion, CCL14 is an independent prognostic factor for EOC and upregulation of CCL14 is associated with a more favorable prognosis in patients with EOC., (Copyright: © Cai et al.)

Background: The present study aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) in patients with lung sarcomatoid carcinoma (LSC)., Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the clinicopathological parameters of 100 cases of LSC in the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center. Receiver operator characteristics curve analysis was performed to define the cutoff point for the preoperative peripheral blood NLR. The relationship between NLR and the clinicopathological parameters of patients with LSC was estimated using χ 2 analysis. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses were carried out to evaluate the impact of preoperative blood NLR on postoperative survival of patients with LSC., Results: The analyses revealed that the preoperative peripheral blood NLR was significantly associated with tumor size, pN stage, and clinical stage (P<0.05). No relationship was found between NLR and age, gender, smoking, pT stage, pM stage, relapse, and therapy. Preoperative peripheral blood NLR, clinical stage, pT stage, tumor-node-metastasis stage, and tumor size were associated with prognosis in the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis. Patients with a low NLR value had longer survival time than those with a high NLR [mean overall survival (OS) time: 87.1 vs. 16.0 months, P<0.05]. Cox multivariate analysis confirmed that preoperative peripheral blood NLR was an independent indicator for the prognosis of LSC (hazard ratio =3.906, P<0.05)., Conclusions: The preoperative peripheral blood NLR was associated closely with the development and progression of LSC. Patients with an increased NLR were likely to have poor prognosis. Preoperative peripheral blood NLR might function as an important independent prognostic indicator for patients with LSC., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/tcr.2019.08.35). The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (2019 Translational Cancer Research. All rights reserved.)

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the differential expression of α-sma-positive fibroblasts (CAFs) in nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPCs), nasopharyngitis, metastatic tissues of NPCs and its prognostic value in NPCs. Methods: The expression of α-sma-labeled CAFs in 85 NPCs, 32 nasopharyngitis and 12 metastatic tissues of NPCs was detected by immunohistochemical method. The relationship between CAFs and clinicopathological parameters of NPCs was analyzed. Results: The high density of CAFs in the NPCs, nasopharyngitis and metastatic tissues of NPCs group were 41.2% (35/85), 6.2% (2/32) and 83.3% (10/12), and a significant difference was showed among these three groups ( P <0.05). Chi-square test showed that there was no significant correlation between the density of CAFs and gender, age, N stage, treatment (P >0.05), but closely correlated with T stage and relapse ( P <0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the mean overall survival of high-density and low-density CAFs was 86.8 months and 127.0 months, respectively. Correspondingly, the 5-year survival rates were 57.1% (20/35) and 90.0% (45/50), and there were inversely statistical differences between two groups ( P <0.05). Cox multivariate analysis showed that the density of CAFs could be used as an independent prognostic factor for the survival of NPC patients ( P <0.05). Conclusions: The density of CAFs could be closely related to the metastasis of NPCs, and also is an efficient prediction factor of poor survival in patients with NPCs., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.

Primary localized amyloidomas of the renal pelvis are challenging to diagnose, due to non-specific imaging results and the unusual location. The present study reports a rare case of primary localized amyloidoma of the renal pelvis and aims to illustrate the challenges in pre-operatively discriminating between this disease and transitional cell carcinomas. The present study identified that the mass was situated in the left renal pelvis using ultrasonography. A nephroureterectomy was performed following careful preparation. Finally, histopathological studies revealed that the tumor consisted of massive diffuse deposits of amyloid and microscopic amorphous eosinophilic material, which stained positively for Congo red, demonstrating potassium permanganate digestion. Consequently, a diagnosis of amyloid light chain-type amyloidoma was determined. Systematic examinations were performed following the unexpected diagnosis, which eliminated the possibility of amyloid associated-type amyloidoma. In total, 4 months post-surgery, the patient remained tumor-free.

Pulmonary mucoepidermoid carcinoma (PMEC) is a rare malignant neoplasm, and little is known about the prognostic factors. The aim of the present study was to identify the relationship between tumor's histological features and clinical behaviors and to analyze the survival of patients with PMEC. A total of 34 patients with PMEC from May 2001 to April 2013 were included in the investigation. The clinical data, radiological manifestation, pathological findings, treatment strategy, and prognoses of all patients were analyzed retrospectively. The patients were classified into low-grade group (n = 25) and high-grade group (n = 9), based on histological grades. High-grade PMEC was more common in patient with elevated serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) (P = 0.033), advanced tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage (P = 0.004) and lymph node metastasis (P < 0.001). The 5-year PFS and OS of all patients were 75.7% and 83.6%, respectively. Age, pathological grade, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage were correlated with the survival of PMEC patients. Lymph node metastasis was an independent predictor of OS (HR, 0.080; P = 0.029) and PFS (HR, 0.090; P = 0. 004). A higher tumor histological grade indicated a more aggressive behavior. Patients who had undergone complete resection for PMEC without any lymph node metastasis were expected to be cured.