Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The marker strategy design (MSGD) has been proposed to assess and validate predictive markers for targeted therapies and immunotherapies. Under this design, patients are randomized into two strategies: the marker-based strategy, which treats patients based on their marker status, and the non-marker-based strategy, which randomizes patients into treatments independent of their marker status in the same way as in a standard randomized clinical trial. The strategy effect is then tested by comparing the response rate between the two strategies and this strategy effect is commonly used to evaluate the predictive capability of the markers. We show that this commonly used between-strategy test is flawed, which may cause investigators to miss the opportunity to discover important predictive markers or falsely claim an irrelevant marker as predictive. Then we propose new procedures to improve the power of the MSGD to detect the predictive marker effect. One is based on a binary response endpoint; the second is based on survival endpoints. We conduct simulation studies to compare the performance of the MSGD with the widely used marker stratified design (MSFD). Numerical studies show that the MSGD and MSFD has comparable performance. Hence, contrary to popular belief that the MSGD is an inferior design compared with the MSFD, we conclude that using the MSGD with the proposed tests is an efficient and ethical way to find predictive markers for targeted therapies.

Most of wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) are operated under low loading both in water quality and water capacity (flow rate) in Taiwan. Because various treatment methods used in WWTP would cause different power consumptions. In general, the flow rate of wastewater treated is proportional to the power consumption. The purpose of this study is simulating water quality and water capacity with a case of municipal wastewater treatment plant, using standard activated sludge method. In this work we will investigate the feasibility of save power using operation and parameters adjustment in wastewater system. A further step is to conduct the save energy in current WWTP under normal wastewater treatment capacity and national effluent standard. Results showed the major save energy was at inflow pump and aeration system of biological treatment stage. Both power consumptions of two were about 60 ~70 % of total power consumption in the plant. Thus we should focus the operating conditions to plan the save energy project, and calculate the total power system and energy consumption of all unit facilities before we are going to improve the energy save in WWTP. Important note is firstly to select units and facilities having high energy consumption for evaluating the possibility of energy save. Secondly is develop and using a good management system to attain the goal of save energy.