Hub location problems, with the hub-and-spoke network structure, involve locating hub facilities, allocating the non-hubs (spokes) to the hubs, and determining the path for each origin-destination pair. In a pure hub-and-spoke network, all hubs, which act as intermediate switching or transshipment points for internodal flows, are fully interconnected and none of the non-hubs are directly connec...

Maritime cabotage is a legislation published by a particular coastal country, which is used to conduct the cargo transportation between its two domestic ports. This paper proposes a two-phase mathematical programming model to formulate the liner hub-and-spoke shipping network design problem subject to the maritime cabotage legislations, i.e., the hub location and feeder allocation problem for p...

BACKGROUND A hub-and-spoke telestroke network is an effective way to extend quality acute stroke care to remote hospitals and to improve patient outcomes. This study assessed the cost-effectiveness of a telestroke network in the management of acute ischemic stroke from the perspectives of a network, a hub hospital, and a spoke hospital. METHODS AND RESULTS A model was developed to compare cos...

Time sensitive acute stroke treatments and the growing shortage of vascular neurologists compound to create a gap in the delivery of care to meet the American Stroke Association guidelines in underserviced regions. Audio/video consultation (telemedicine), which has been evolving since the late 1990's, is a putative solution. While telemedicine can serve as a valuable facilitative tool, the tele...

The airlines reorganization will accelerate the switch of the Chinese mainland civil aviation system from a former point-to-point (PP) structure to a hub-and-spoke (HS) network. In such a context, the major efforts of our paper are put into identifying hub airports in mainland China. We first analyze the HS network’s competitive advantages and find four desirable hub characteristics. A three-le...

Electrical synapses have been shown to be important for enabling and detecting neuronal synchrony in both vertebrates and invertebrates. Hub-and-spoke circuits, in which a central hub neuron is electrically coupled to several input neurons, are an overrepresented motif in the C. elegans nervous system and may represent a conserved functional unit. The functional relevance of this configuration ...