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Whether income inequality is related to population health is still open to debate. We aimed to critically assess the relationship between income inequality and mortality in 43 European countries using comparable data between 1987 and 2008, controlling for time-invariant and time-variant country-level confounding factors. Annual data on income inequality, expressed as Gini index based on net household income, were extracted from the Standardizing the World Income Inequality Database. Data on life expectancy at birth and age-standardized mortality by cause of death were obtained from the Human Lifetable Database and the World Health Organization European Health for All Database. Data on infant mortality were obtained from the United Nations World Population Prospects Database. The relationships between income inequality and mortality indicators were studied using country fixed effects models, adjusted for time trends and country characteristics. Significant associations between income inequality and many mortality indicators were found in pooled cross-sectional regressions, indicating higher mortality in countries with larger income inequalities. Once the country fixed effects were added, all associations between income inequality and mortality indicators became insignificant, except for mortality from external causes and homicide among men, and cancers among women. The significant results for homicide and cancers disappeared after further adjustment for indicators of democracy, education, transition to national independence, armed conflicts, and economic freedom. Cross-sectional associations between income inequality and mortality seem to reflect the confounding effects of other country characteristics. In a European context, national levels of income inequality do not have an independent effect on mortality. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10654-015-0066-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The two-dimensional strip packing problem arises in wide variety of industrial applications. In this paper, we focus on the bitmap shape packing problem where a set of arbitrary shaped objects represented in bitmap format should be packed into a larger rectangular container without overlap. The complex geometry of bitmap shapes and large amount of data to be processed make it difficult to check overlaps. For this reason, most of the algorithms in the literature only deal with small-scale instances. We propose an efficient method for checking overlaps and design efficient implementations of two construction algorithms, which are based on the bottom-left strategy. The computational results for a series of well-known benchmark instances show that the proposed algorithms obtain good solutions in remarkably short time and are effective for large-scale instances.

Content-Centric Networking (CCN) is a novel architecture that has been proposed as a solution for dealing with various problems obsessing the Internet, such as the excessive bandwidth costs that result from peer-to-peer (P2P) traffic and content delivery networks (CDN). CCN names packets rather than end-hosts, and most of CCN's characteristics are the consequences of this fact. However, the current design of CCN has some limitations in traffic control, especially in flow fairness and node-to-node collaboration. To solve this problem, we propose an SDN-based autonomie system as the control plane to supplement CCN traffic management. Correspondingly, in the data plane, we utilize a multiprotocol switch to support CCN protocol, flow-aware content delivery and traffic control. We also discuss the implementation and extension issues, and finally, we demonstrate our hybrid scheme to perform centralized and intelligent traffic management, which provides higher awareness, fairness, and low congestion.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging networking paradigm that assumes a logically centralized control plane separated from the data plane. Despite all its advantages, separating the control and data planes introduces new challenges regarding resilient communications between the two. That is, disconnections between switches and their controllers could result in substantial packet loss and performance degradation. To achieve resilient control traffic forwarding, this paper investigates the protection of control traffic in SDNs with multiple controllers. We propose a control traffic protection scheme that combines both local rerouting and constrained reverse forwarding protections. This scheme enables switches to locally react to failures and redirect the control traffic to controllers by using standby backup forwarding options. Our goal is then to find a set of primary routes for control traffic, called protection control network, where as much control traffic as possible can benefit from the proposed protection scheme. We formulate the protection control network problem and develop an algorithm to solve it. Simulation results on real topologies show that our approach significantly improves the resilience of control traffic.

By separating the control and forwarding planes, Software-Defined networking (SDN) enables the forwarding paths to be flexibly controlled by the logically centralized controllers using the global network view. To introduce SDN into existing networks, it is necessary to upgrade traditional devices to SDN- enabled ones. However, due to the business, economic and management limitations, it is difficult to realize full SDN deployment. As a result, how to migrate existing devices to SDN-compliant ones becomes the obvious dilemma for every network operator. In this paper, we address this question from the network performance perspective, and study how to leverage the capability of SDN to maximize traffic flow that can be achieved in hybrid SDNs. We formulate the maximum flow problem in networks with partial SDN deployment, and develop a fast Fully Polynomial Time Approximation Scheme (FPTAS) for solving it. Simulation results using real topologies show that hybrid SDNs outperform traditional networks, and we can obtain a near optimal network performance when 50% of SDN nodes are deployed.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) is a new paradigm, which emerged in the innovation for future networks and has been successfully applied in many scenarios including Campus/Enterprise network and Data Center network. By extending the concept of SDN and autonomicity to the design of versatile network infrastructures, especially to the design of a carrier grade network, we propose AMA, which is an autonomic management architecture for SDN-based multi-services network. AMA is designed and implemented by utilizing autonomic management and network virtualization technologies. We believe that AMA can support more application types, and can be used to build a more flexible network.

Software Defined Networking (SDN) has already gained enormous momentum in the industry. Its innovative architecture that separates the control and forwarding planes allows third-party software developers more leeway in controlling network behavior. Since new protocols and forwarding schemes are needed to produce better network performance, efforts have been put forth in redefining user-defined protocol support. Besides, the concept of autonomicity has been proposed recently to solve the dilemma of management in complex network environments. In this paper, we propose the design and implementation of PindSwitch, which provides a SDN-based Protocol-independent platform to allow users to outline their own protocols' format and flow processing rules into physical switches. We also introduce autonomicity and self-∗ attributes into SDN by extending the architecture of GANA to achieve better management of user-defined protocols and their processing schemes.

Centromere protein H (CENP-H) has been shown to be significantly upregulated in many types of cancers and is associated with disrupted cell cycle regulation, cell proliferation and genetic instability. The aim of the present study was to explore the expression and localization of CENP-H in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and determine whether its overexpression is a prognostic biomarker for HCC. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (pcr), real-time qPCR and western blotting were used to compare CENP-H expression at the mRNA and protein levels in HCC samples and corresponding adjacent non-cancerous samples. CENP-H protein levels were determined in 60 paired paraffin-embedded HCC tissues using immunohistochemistry (IHC), and the correlation with clinicopathological features and patient prognosis was analyzed. In addition, an immunofluorescence assay was performed to test the expression and localization of CENP-H protein in HCC cells. Results showed that levels of CENP-H mRNA and protein were higher in HCC samples than in the corresponding adjacent non-cancerous samples. In 60 paired paraffin-embedded tissues, CENP-H was upregulated in the HCC samples (38/60, 63.3%) relative to the adjacent non-cancerous samples (21/60, 35%, P=0.003), and a higher level of upregulation was associated with tumor size (P=0.032); higher histological grade (P=0.001); more advanced TNM stage (P=0.002) and Chinese clinical stage (P=0.008); and poorer prognosis. In addition, consistent with the results of IHC, the immunofluorescence assay showed that CENP-H was localized in the nucleus of Hep3B cells. CENP-H was overexpressed in HCC, and its level of upregulation was an independent prognostic indicator, suggesting that CENP-H may be an effective therapeutic strategy for the treatment of HCC.

Over the past five decades, two successive waves of political reform have brought democracy to, first, Spain, Portugal and Greece, and, more recently, Central and Eastern European countries. We assessed whether democratization was associated with improvements in population health, as indicated by life expectancy and cause-specific mortality rates. Data on life expectancy at birth, age-standardized total and cause-specific mortality rates, levels of democracy and potential time-variant confounding variables were collected from harmonized international databanks. In two pooled cross-sectional time-series analyses with country-fixed effects, life expectancy and cause-specific mortality were regressed on measures of current and cumulative democracy, controlling for confounders. A first analysis covered the 1960-1990 period, a second covered t In the 1960-1990 period, current democracy was more strongly associated with higher life expectancy than cumulative democracy. The positive effects of current democracy on total mortality were mediated mainly by lower mortality from heart disease, pneumonia, liver cirrhosis, and suicide. In the 1987-2008 period, however, current democracy was associated with lower, and cumulative democracy with higher life expectancy, particularly among men. The positive effects of cumulative democracy on total mortality were mediated mainly by lower mortality from circulatory diseases, cancer of the breast, and external causes. Current democracy was associated with higher mortality from motor vehicle accidents in both periods, and also with higher mortality from cancer and all external causes i Our results suggest that in Europe during these two periods democratization has had mixed effects. That short-term changes in levels of democracy had positive effects in the first but not in the second period is probably due to the fact that democratization in Central and Eastern Europe was part of a complete system change which caused major societal disruptions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

In the discussion about Future Internet, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), enabled by OpenFlow, is currently seen as one of the most promising paradigm. While the availability and scalability concerns rises as a single controller could be alleviated by using replicate or distributed controllers, there lacks a flexible mechanism to allow controller load balancing. This paper proposes BalanceFlow, a controller load balancing architecture for OpenFlow networks. By utilizing CONTROLLER X action extension for OpenFlow switches and cross-controller communication, one of the controllers, called “super controller”, can flexibly tune the flow-requests handled by each controller, without introducing unacceptable propagation latencies. Experiments based on real topology show that BalanceFlow can adjust the load of each controller dynamically.

A charge and size uniform polysaccharide GW2M was extracted with cold water from red alga Gloiopeltis furcata and purified by strong anion ion-exchange and gel permeation chromatography. Its chemical structure was identified by methylation, (1)H-(1)H COSY, (1)H-(13)C HMQC and (1)H-(13)C HMBC techniques. The experimental data showed that GW2M was composed of galactose (40.3%), 3,6-anhydro-galactose (34.1%) and sulfate (24.8%) with an average molecular mass of 20.6 kDa. The results proved GW2M was a linear repeating sequence of alternating (1→3)-linked 6-O-sulfated-β-d-galactose (G6S) and (1→4)-linked 3,6-anhydro-α-l-galactose (A) which made it to be an ideal 6-O-sulfated-agarose. The sequences of serial oligosaccharides prepared by mild acid and reductive acid hydrolysis from GW2M were confirmed using electrospray collision induced dissociation tandem mass spectrometry (ES-CID-MS/MS) technique.

In this paper, we propose a heuristic algorithm for a container loading problem for logistic platforms, which is the problem for the Challenge Renault/ESICUP 2015. The three-dimensional container loading problem involves packing a set of cuboid items into bins so as to minimize the total volume used. In this paper, we propose an effective approach to solve this problem based on a greedy strategy. We first generate high-quality stacks that consist of some items and then pack these stacks on the floor of bins, considering the resulting problem as a two-dimensional bin packing problem. The proposed algorithm is tested on a series of instances provided for the challenge. The computational results show that the proposed algorithm performs well on these instances.

In this paper, we consider the crew pairing problem in airline scheduling that calls for assigning crew members in order to cover all flights with the minimum total person-days under the constraints that the schedule of each crew member does not violate given constraints on the total working time, flying time, and the number of landings. In practical applications, it is difficult to create an efficient schedule satisfying all the constraints. We formulate the problem as a set covering problem and apply an LP-based column generation approach to generate a candidate set of schedules. We propose a branch-and-bound method based upon a resource constrained dynamic programming for the column generation procedure. Computational results are given for a number of large-scale instances with up to 10,000 flights.

Annual changes of absolute and relative inequalities in cause-specific mortality. (DOCX 14Â kb)

Annual changes of absolute and relative inequalities in cause-specific mortality. (DOCX 14Â kb)

Correlation coefficients between country-specific trends in inequality in mortality and country-specific trends in income inequality. (DOCX 12Â kb)

Sensitivity analysis comparing all-cause and non-smoking related mortality. (DOCX 12Â kb)

Sensitivity analysis comparing all-cause and non-smoking related mortality. (DOCX 12Â kb)