Thursday, December 16, 2010

Nice and Simple

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================================================================================================================================================ The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, adequate-protein, low-carbohydrate diet primarily used to treat difficult-to-control epilepsy in children. This medical nutrition therapy mimics aspects of starvation by forcing the body to burn fats rather than carbohydrates. Normally, the carbohydrates contained in food are converted into glucose, which is then transported around the body and is particularly important in fuelling brain function. However, if there is very little carbohydrate in the diet, the liver converts fat into fatty acids and ketone bodies. The ketone bodies pass into the brain and replace glucose as an energy source. The diet provides just enough protein for body growth and repair, and sufficient calories to maintain the correct weight for age and height. Developed in the 1920s, the classic ketogenic diet contains a 4:1 ratio by weight of fat to combined protein and carbohydrate. This is achieved by excluding high-carbohydrate foods such as starchy fruits and vegetables, bread, pasta, grains and sugar, while increasing the consumption of foods high in fat such as cream and butter. The diet, which is closely supervised by a neurologist and a dietitian, is effective in half of the patients who try it, and very effective in a third. The mechanism by which the ketogenic diet reduces the frequency of epileptic seizures is unknown. Read the rest of this article: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet > _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1608: Emperor Susenyos of Ethiopia and his troops surprised a raiding army of the Oromo at Ebenat, reportedly killing 12,000 Oromo at the cost of 400 men. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susenyos_of_Ethiopia > 1885: Mahdist War: British troops defeated Mahdist Sudanese forces at the Battle of Abu Klea in Khartoum, Sudan. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Abu_Klea > 1893: The Citizens' Committee of Public Safety led by Lorrin A. Thurston overthrew the government of Queen Liliʻuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliuokalani > 1904: Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, premiered at the Moscow Art Theatre in Moscow. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cherry_Orchard > 1966: A U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress collided with a KC-135 Stratotanker during aerial refueling over the Mediterranean Sea, dropping three hydrogen bombs on land near Palomares in the municipality of Cuevas del Almanzora, Andalucía, Spain; and a fourth one (pictured after its recovery) into the sea. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash > 2002: Mount Nyiragongo erupted in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the town of Goma, destroying 4,500 buildings and leaving about 120,000 people homeless. < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Nyiragongo > _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: errhine (adj): Causing an increase in mucus within the nose, and hence causing one to sneeze < http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/errhine > ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: We have this window of opportunity; we have a chance to make something real happen. Something possible happen, to live beyond our fear — think about that, and help us. Help lift us up, help us fight this fight to change, — transform — this country in a fundamental way. This chance wonÂ't come around again. --Michelle Obama < http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michelle_Obama > _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l Questions or comments? Contact dal- ... @wikimedia.org Everyone, I'm pleased to annouce the release both a production and experimental release of GMPY. GMPY is a wrapper for the MPIR or GMP multiple-precision arithmetic library. GMPY is available for download from: http://code.google.com/p/gmpy/ Production release ------------------ GMPY 1.12 is the new stable release. In addition to fixing a few bugs, GMPY 1.12 adds support for Python 2.7 and the current py3k development trunk. Even though my primary development focus has shifted to GMPY2 (see below), GMPY 1.X will continue to receive bug and compatibility fixes. Experimental release -------------------- To simplify the codebase, allow for changes in the API, and support simultaneous installation, the development version has been renamed to GMPY2. The following is list of changes in GMPY2: * support for a mutable integer type "xmpz" * removal of random number functions * "xmpz" supports slices for setting/clearing bits * some methods have been renamed (scan1 -> bit_scan1) * support for Python prior to 2.6 has been removed * support for all division modes has been added * ceiling - round to +Infinity * floor - round to -Infinity * truncate - round to zero * 2exp - division by a power of 2 * support is_even() and is_odd() If you use GMPY regularly, please test GMPY2. There have been several requests asking for a mutable integer and I am curious if there are real-world performance improvements. Future enhancements ------------------- I am looking for feedback on future enhancements. If you have specific requests, please let me know. Below are some ideas I've had: * An optional "max_bits" parameter for an "xmpz". If specified, all results would be calculated modulo 2^max_bits. * I've added the ability to set/clear bits of an "xmpz" using slice notation. Should I allow the source to be arbitrary set of bits or require that all bits are set to 0 or 1? Should support for "max_bits" be required? * Improved floating point support. Comments on provided binaries ----------------------------- The pre-compiled Windows installers use later versions of GMP and MPIR so performance some operations should be faster. The 32-bit Windows installers were compiled with MinGW32 using GMP 5.0.1 and will automatically recognize the CPU type and use assembly code optimized for the CPU at runtime. The 64-bit Windows installers were compiled Microsoft's SDK compilers using MPIR 2.1.1. Detailed instructions are included if you want to compile your own binary. Please report any issues! casevh -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-announce-list Support the Python Software Foundation: http://www.python.org/psf/donations/