Shapiro's cyclic inequality for even \(n\) (Q701399)

\textit{H. S. Shapiro} [Am. Math. Mon. 61, 571 (1954)] stated the conjecture that the inequality \[ \sum^n_{i=1} {x_i\over x_{i+1}+ x_{i+2}}\geq {n\over 2}\tag{1} \] holds for every integer \(n\geq 3\) and for every sequence \((x_0, x_1,\dots, x_n,x_{n+1}, x_{n+2})\) such that \(x_i\geq 0\), \(x_{i+1}+ x_{i+2}> 0\), \(x_{n+1}= x_1\) and \(x_{n+2}= x_2\). This conjecture has been considered in many papers, for a bibliography see, e.g., \textit{A. Clausing's} paper [``A review of Shapiro's cyclic inequality'', Int. Ser. Numer. Math. 103, 17-31 (1992; Zbl 0772.26014)]. The authors give an analytic proof of (1) for \(n= 12\).