title: Madan Puri

text: He died in 1985 of a heart attack at the age of 69. He was a resident of R P Masani Road in Matunga, Mumbai, also known as Punjabi Galli, with other actors of that era including the Kapoors. Several films were released after his death until 1989 with his final being "Santosh".


title: Madan Puri

text: Puri's wife, Sheela Devi Puri (Wadhera), died a few years after him. Their son, Lt. Col. (Dr.) Kamlesh K. Puri, published a book about the life and times of Madan Puri titled ""My Father, the Villain"" in 2015 (the 100th anniversary of his birth).


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In computer science, Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) is a heuristic search algorithm for some kinds of decision processes, most notably those employed in software that plays board games. In that context MCTS is used to solve the game tree.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: MCTS was combined with neural networks in 2016 and has been used in multiple board games like Chess, Shogi, Checkers, Backgammon, Contract Bridge, Computer Go, Scrabble, and Clobber as well as in turn-based-strategy video games (such as 's implementation in the high level campaign AI).


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The Monte Carlo method, which uses random sampling for deterministic problems which are difficult or impossible to solve using other approaches, dates back to the 1940s. In his 1987 PhD thesis, Bruce Abramson combined minimax search with an "expected-outcome model" based on random game playouts to the end, instead of the usual static evaluation function. Abramson said the expected-outcome model "is shown to be precise, accurate, easily estimable, efficiently calculable, and domain-independent." He experimented in-depth with tic-tac-toe and then with machine-generated evaluation functions for Othello and chess.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Such methods were then explored and successfully applied to heuristic search in the field of automated theorem proving by W. Ertel, J. Schumann and C. Suttner in 1989, thus improving the exponential search times of uninformed search algorithms such as e.g. breadth-first search, depth-first search or iterative deepening.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In 1992, B. Brügmann employed it for the first time in a Go-playing program. In 2002, Chang et al. proposed the idea of "recursive rolling out and backtracking" with "adaptive" sampling choices in their Adaptive Multi-stage Sampling (AMS) algorithm for the model of Markov decision processes. AMS was the first work to explore the idea of UCB-based exploration and exploitation in constructing sampled/simulated (Monte Carlo) trees and was the main seed for UCT (Upper Confidence Trees).


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In 2006, inspired by these predecessors, Rémi Coulom described the application of the Monte Carlo method to game-tree search and coined the name Monte Carlo tree search, L. Kocsis and Cs. Szepesvári developed the UCT (Upper Confidence bounds applied to Trees) algorithm, and S. Gelly et al. implemented UCT in their program MoGo. In 2008, MoGo achieved dan (master) level in 9×9 Go, and the Fuego program began to win against strong amateur players in 9×9 Go.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In January 2012, the Zen program won 3:1 in a Go match on a 19×19 board with an amateur 2 dan player. Google Deepmind developed the program AlphaGo, which in October 2015 became the first Computer Go program to beat a professional human Go player without handicaps on a full-sized 19x19 board. In March 2016, AlphaGo was awarded an honorary 9-dan (master) level in 19×19 Go for defeating Lee Sedol in a five-game match with a final score of four games to one. AlphaGo represents a significant improvement over previous Go programs as well as a milestone in machine learning as it uses Monte Carlo tree search with artificial neural networks (a deep learning method) for policy (move selection) and value, giving it efficiency far surpassing previous programs.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: MCTS algorithm has also been used in programs that play other board games (for example Hex, Havannah, Game of the Amazons, and Arimaa), real-time video games (for instance Ms. Pac-Man and Fable Legends), and nondeterministic games (such as skat, poker, , or Settlers of Catan).


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The focus of MCTS is on the analysis of the most promising moves, expanding the search tree based on random sampling of the search space.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The application of Monte Carlo tree search in games is based on many "playouts," also called "roll-outs". In each playout, the game is played out to the very end by selecting moves at random. The final game result of each playout is then used to weight the nodes in the game tree so that better nodes are more likely to be chosen in future playouts.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The most basic way to use playouts is to apply the same number of playouts after each legal move of the current player, then choose the move which led to the most victories. The efficiency of this method—called "Pure Monte Carlo Game Search"—often increases with time as more playouts are assigned to the moves that have frequently resulted in the current player's victory according to previous playouts. Each round of Monte Carlo tree search consists of four steps:


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: This graph shows the steps involved in one decision, with each node showing the ratio of wins to total playouts from that point in the game tree for the player that the node represents. In the Selection diagram, black is about to move. The root node shows there are 11 wins out of 21 playouts for white from this position so far. It complements the total of 10/21 black wins shown along the three black nodes under it, each of which represents a possible black move. Note that this graph does not follow the UCT algorithm described below.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: If white loses the simulation, all nodes along the selection incremented their simulation count (the denominator), but among them only the black nodes were credited with wins (the numerator). If instead white wins, all nodes along the selection would still increment their simulation count, but among them only the white nodes would be credited with wins. In games where draws are possible, a draw causes the numerator for both black and white to be incremented by 0.5 and the denominator by 1. This ensures that during selection, each player's choices expand towards the most promising moves for that player, which mirrors the goal of each player to maximize the value of their move.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Rounds of search are repeated as long as the time allotted to a move remains. Then the move with the most simulations made (i.e. the highest denominator) is chosen as the final answer.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: This basic procedure can be applied to any game whose positions necessarily have a finite number of moves and finite length. For each position, all feasible moves are determined: "k" random games are played out to the very end, and the scores are recorded. The move leading to the best score is chosen. Ties are broken by fair coin flips. Pure Monte Carlo Game Search results in strong play in several games with random elements, as in the game "EinStein würfelt nicht!". It converges to optimal play (as "k" tends to infinity) in board filling games with random turn order, for instance in the game Hex with random turn order. DeepMind's AlphaZero replaces the simulation step with an evaluation based on a neural network.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The main difficulty in selecting child nodes is maintaining some balance between the "exploitation" of deep variants after moves with high average win rate and the "exploration" of moves with few simulations. The first formula for balancing exploitation and exploration in games, called UCT ("Upper Confidence Bound" 1 "applied to trees"), was introduced by Levente Kocsis and Csaba Szepesvári. UCT is based on the UCB1 formula derived by Auer, Cesa-Bianchi, and Fischer and the probably convergent AMS (Adaptive Multi-stage Sampling) algorithm first applied to multi-stage decision-making models (specifically, Markov Decision Processes) by Chang, Fu, Hu, and Marcus. Kocsis and Szepesvári recommend to choose in each node of the game tree the move for which the expression formula_1 has the highest value. In this formula:


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The first component of the formula above corresponds to exploitation; it is high for moves with high average win ratio. The second component corresponds to exploration; it is high for moves with few simulations.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Most contemporary implementations of Monte Carlo tree search are based on some variant of UCT that traces its roots back to the AMS simulation optimization algorithm for estimating the value function in finite-horizon Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) introduced by Chang et al. (2005) in Operations Research. (AMS was the first work to explore the idea of UCB-based exploration and exploitation in constructing sampled/simulated (Monte Carlo) trees and was the main seed for UCT.)


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Although it has been proven that the evaluation of moves in Monte Carlo tree search converges to minimax, the basic version of Monte Carlo tree search converges only in so called "Monte Carlo Perfect" games. However, Monte Carlo tree search does offer significant advantages over alpha–beta pruning and similar algorithms that minimize the search space.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In particular, pure Monte Carlo tree search does not need an explicit evaluation function. Simply implementing the game's mechanics is sufficient to explore the search space (i.e. the generating of allowed moves in a given position and the game-end conditions). As such, Monte Carlo tree search can be employed in games without a developed theory or in general game playing.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The game tree in Monte Carlo tree search grows asymmetrically as the method concentrates on the more promising subtrees. Thus, it achieves better results than classical algorithms in games with a high branching factor.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: A disadvantage is that in certain positions, there may be moves that look superficially strong, but that actually lead to a loss via a subtle line of play. Such "trap states" require thorough analysis to be handled correctly, particularly when playing against an expert player; however, MCTS may not "see" such lines due to its policy of selective node expansion. It is believed that this may have been part of the reason for AlphaGo's loss in its fourth game against Lee Sedol. In essence, the search attempts to prune sequences which are less relevant. In some cases, a play can lead to a very specific line of play which is significant, but which is overlooked when the tree is pruned, and this outcome is therefore "off the search radar".


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Various modifications of the basic Monte Carlo tree search method have been proposed to shorten the search time. Some employ domain-specific expert knowledge, others do not.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Monte Carlo tree search can use either "light" or "heavy" playouts. Light playouts consist of random moves while heavy playouts apply various heuristics to influence the choice of moves. These heuristics may employ the results of previous playouts (e.g. the Last Good Reply heuristic) or expert knowledge of a given game. For instance, in many Go-playing programs certain stone patterns in a portion of the board influence the probability of moving into that area. Paradoxically, playing suboptimally in simulations sometimes makes a Monte Carlo tree search program play stronger overall.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Domain-specific knowledge may be employed when building the game tree to help the exploitation of some variants. One such method assigns nonzero "priors" to the number of won and played simulations when creating each child node, leading to artificially raised or lowered average win rates that cause the node to be chosen more or less frequently, respectively, in the selection step. A related method, called "progressive bias", consists in adding to the UCB1 formula a formula_2 element, where is a heuristic score of the -th move.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: The basic Monte Carlo tree search collects enough information to find the most promising moves only after many rounds; until then its moves are essentially random. This exploratory phase may be reduced significantly in a certain class of games using RAVE ("Rapid Action Value Estimation"). In these games, permutations of a sequence of moves lead to the same position. Typically, they are board games in which a move involves placement of a piece or a stone on the board. In such games the value of each move is often only slightly influenced by other moves.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: In RAVE, for a given game tree node , its child nodes store not only the statistics of wins in playouts started in node but also the statistics of wins in all playouts started in node and below it, if they contain move (also when the move was played in the tree, between node and a playout). This way the contents of tree nodes are influenced not only by moves played immediately in a given position but also by the same moves played later.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: When using RAVE, the selection step selects the node, for which the modified UCB1 formula formula_3 has the highest value. In this formula, formula_4 and formula_5 stand for the number of won playouts containing move and the number of all playouts containing move , and the formula_6 function should be close to one and to zero for relatively small and relatively big and formula_5, respectively. One of many formulas for formula_6, proposed by D. Silver, says that in balanced positions one can take formula_9, where is an empirically chosen constant.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Heuristics used in Monte Carlo tree search often require many parameters. There are automated methods to tune the parameters to maximize the win rate.


title: Monte Carlo tree search

text: Monte Carlo tree search can be concurrently executed by many threads or processes. There are several fundamentally different methods of its parallel execution:


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: The Ferrara Candy Company is an American candy manufacturer, based in Chicago, Illinois, and owned by the Ferrero Group.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: The company was formed from a 2012 merger of the Illinois-based Ferrara Pan Candy Company and Minnesota-based Farley's & Sathers Candy Company. Ferrara's product line includes the brands of Ferrara-branded pan candy (such as Lemonheads, Atomic Fireballs, Red Hots, and Original Boston Baked Beans) and those of Farley's & Sathers (such as Brach's, Chuckles, Jujyfruits, and Now and Later). In November 2017, The Ferrero Group announced that they were going to acquire the company, which was finalized in December 2017.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: In 2018, Ferrara's parent company Ferrero SpA purchased Nestlé's U.S. candy line for $2.8 billion and handed responsibility for most products to Ferrara. Former Nestle products now distributed in the U.S. by Ferrara include Butterfinger, Crunch, Baby Ruth, Raisinets, Nips, Laffy Taffy, and hard candy (such as Spree and Everlasting Gobstopper) formerly produced by Nestlé under the Willy Wonka brand. Two notable exceptions are Nestlé's Kit Kat and Rolo lines which are licensed to the Hershey Company.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: The Ferrara family had been bakers in Italy. Salvatore Ferrara emigrated from Nola to New York in 1900. In 1908, he opened a bakery at 772 W. Taylor, in the heart of Chicago's "Little Italy" neighborhood. He sold candy-coated almonds known as "confetti" (or Jordan almonds), a popular treat at Italian weddings.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: When candy sales became greater than pastries, Ferrara partnered with two brothers-in-law, Salvatore Buffardi and Anello Pagano. They built a two-story brick building at 2200 W. Taylor and began producing a variety of panned candies. The second floor of the building was devoted to the revolving kettles that produced the pan candy, with all of the machines being driven by a giant wheel. The candy was dropped to the shipping department below through a hole in the floor.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: The private equity firm Catterton Partners, owner of Farley's & Sathers Candy Company, arranged the 2012 deal whereby that well-established confectioner would merge with the Ferrara Pan Candy Company. Although Ferrara Pan Candy was only about half the size of Farley's & Sathers, the new company was christened as the Ferrara Candy Company, and was placed under the leadership of Ferrara Pan Chief Executive Salvatore Ferrara II.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: Ferrara Candy is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It operates seven manufacturing plants in the U.S. and Mexico, as well as distribution centers around the United States.


title: Ferrara Candy Company

text: The company sells 92% of all mellowcremes in the U.S.; it is the largest producer of candy canes, the largest seller of conversation hearts and produces a large portion of the jelly beans that are consumed in the United States. The company has 21 starch moguls, of 40 in the U.S. as a whole. The company has between 700 and 800 pans operating at any given time. The company claims that it produces 1 million pounds of gummy candy per week in four manufacturing plants, two in the U.S. and two in Mexico. The company employs approximately 6,000 people.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella Baratheon is a fictional character in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series of epic fantasy novels by American author George R. R. Martin, and its television adaptation "Game of Thrones". Myrcella's character, development and her interactions and impact differ greatly between the two media.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Introduced in 1996's "A Game of Thrones", Myrcella is the only daughter of Cersei Lannister from the kingdom of Westeros. She subsequently appeared in Martin's "A Clash of Kings" (1998) and "A Feast for Crows" (2005).


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella is portrayed by Irish actress Aimee Richardson in the first two seasons of the HBO television adaptation, while English actress Nell Tiger Free portrays her in the show's fifth and sixth seasons.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Since Myrcella Baratheon is not a point of view character in "A Song of Ice and Fire", the reader learns about her through other characters' perspectives, such as her uncle Tyrion Lannister. She is a background character in the books.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella is introduced in "A Game of Thrones" (1996) as the only daughter of Queen Cersei Lannister and King Robert Baratheon. In her first appearance, she accompanies her parents, her two brothers (Joffrey and Tommen Baratheon), and her two "uncles" (Tyrion and Jaime Lannister) to Winterfell where Robert asks Eddard Stark to be appointed as Hand of the King. She is later shown attending the tournament to celebrate Eddard's inauguration into his position. While investigating Jon Arryn's death, Eddard discovers that Myrcella and her brothers are the products of an incestuous affair between Cersei and Jaime.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: In 1998's "A Clash of Kings", Myrcella attends Joffrey's nameday as King. She greets her uncle Tyrion and tells him that she is glad that the rumors of his death were false. During the War of the Five Kings, Tyrion makes plans to forge an alliance with House Martell of Dorne by having Myrcella wed to Trystane Martell, the son of the current ruler of Dorne, but part of the arrangement involved sending her to Dorne to live in the Martell household.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: During "A Storm of Swords" (2000), Trystane's sister Arianne Martell plans to crown Myrcella as Robert's heir instead of Tommen, hoping to incite the Dornishmen to rebel against the Lannisters to seat her on the Iron Throne. However, Doran Martell has been tipped off to the conspiracy and his men ambush Arianne's party as they attempt to sail up the Greenblood. In the ensuing confrontation, one of Arianne's co-conspirators, Ser Gerold "Darkstar" Dayne, attempts to kill Myrcella; although unsuccessful, he cuts off one of her ears and leaves her scarred.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: In the HBO television adaptation, Aimee Richardson portrayed Myrcella for the first two seasons. Initially cast as a stand-in, Richardson impressed the crew enough to be kept as a full cast member; she appeared in eight episodes. Nell Tiger Free played Myrcella for the seasons five and six. Prior to her audition, Free had never seen the show; when talking about the role, she said: "I mean, it’s every kids dream to play a princess and the dresses were fantastic." Richardson learned about the recasting at the San Diego Comic-Con; in response, she posted a Vine video in which she wore a crown and held a sign saying "Princess for Hire". An explanation was not given for the change in actors.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella's fate was one of several differences between how the television show and the novels represented the Sand Snakes and Dorne. Her death scene was originally longer with parallels to Joffrey's death; it would have involved her head exploding and gore splattered throughout the set. Discussing these changes, Free said: "[David Benioff and D. B. Weiss] wanted Myrcella’s death to reflect her life, and wanted it to be sweet – which is rare for [Game of] Thrones." "Esquire"'s Matt Miller wrote that the final version was tamer in comparison to other characters' deaths. Free appeared in six episodes of the show.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella's storyline in the first two seasons follows the books. Myrcella makes her debut, looking "like a Disney Princess" as she arrives with the Lanisters at Winterfell in the series premiere. She is later seen along with her brother Tommen at Joffrey's nameday. Tyrion later sends her off to Dorne to marry into House Martell, so that House Lannister can gain an alliance with them.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: Myrcella (now much older) is seen walking through the Water Gardens with Trystane, with whom she has fallen in love, while being watched by Ellaria Sand and Prince Doran Martell. Ellaria, furious about Oberyn's death, offers to torture Myrcella and send pieces of her back to take revenge on Cersei, whom she feels is responsible for orchestrating Tyrion's show trial which led to the trial by combat that took Oberyn's life, but Doran refuses to harm her. Myrcella is surprised when her "uncle" Jaime Lannister and Bronn finally meet her as she is with Trystane in the gardens. She is upset after Bronn is forced to knock Trystane unconscious, and resists Jaime's urging to leave with him. The Sand Snakes make a sudden ambush in order to kidnap her. She is nearly taken hostage by Nymeria, but the conflict is interrupted after Areo Hotah arrives with a dozen Dornish guards, imprisoning Jaime, Bronn, the Sand Snakes and Ellaria. Myrcella visits Jaime while he is in custody. Jaime tells her that about the situation with Ellaria. He tells her that he needs to take her home to King's Landing. Myrcella, failing to understand, assures him that Dorne is her home now, and that she will stay and marry Trystane. However, her marriage to Trystane never happens as she is poisoned by Ellaria and the Sand Snakes just before she leaves Dorne with Jamie and Bronn. As she is sailing away towards Kings Landing, she dies in Jaime's arms moments after acknowledging him as her father.


title: Myrcella Baratheon

text: In Season 6, Episode 2, her body returns home to King's Landing shortly after her death, and her corpse, complete with stones over her eyes, is later seen in the Great Sept of Baelor.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Lafayette ( , ) is a city in and the county seat of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, United States, located northwest of Indianapolis and southeast of Chicago. West Lafayette, on the other side of the Wabash River, is home to Purdue University, which contributes significantly to both communities. Together, Lafayette and West Lafayette form the core of the Lafayette metropolitan area, which had a population of 224,709 in the 2021 US Census Bureau estimates.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: According to the 2020 United States Census, the population of Lafayette was 70,783, a 25% increase from 56,397 in 2000. Meanwhile, the 2020 Census listed the neighboring city of West Lafayette at 44,595 and the Tippecanoe County population at 186,291.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Lafayette was founded in 1825 on the southeast bank of the Wabash River near where the river becomes impassable for riverboats upstream, though a French fort and trading post had existed since 1717 on the opposite bank and three miles downstream. It was named for the French general Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: When European explorers arrived at this area, it was inhabited by a tribe of Miami Indians known as the Ouiatenon or Weas. In 1717, the French government established Fort Ouiatenon across the Wabash River and three miles (5 km) south of present-day Lafayette. The fort became the center of trade for fur trappers, merchants and Indians. An annual reenactment and festival known as Feast of the Hunters' Moon is held there each autumn.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The town of Lafayette was platted in May 1825 by William Digby, a trader. It was designated as the county seat of the newly formed Tippecanoe County the following year. Like many frontier towns, Lafayette was named for General Lafayette, a French officer who significantly aided George Washington's Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Lafayette toured the United States in 1824 and 1825.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: In its earliest days, Lafayette was a shipping center on the Wabash River. In 1838, Henry Leavitt Ellsworth, the first United States Patent Commissioner, published a booklet titled "Valley of the Upper Wabash, Indiana, with Hints on Its Agricultural Advantages," to promote settlement of the region. By 1845, Ellsworth had purchased of farmland around Lafayette and moved there from Connecticut to supervise land sales. By 1847 Ellsworth was distributing broadsides looking for farmers to purchase his farmland. He became president of the Tippecanoe County Agricultural Society in April 1851 – despite some local resentment over what was called "the Yale Crowd" – but he was defeated the same year when he ran for the Indiana House of Representatives. Ellsworth Street and Ellsworth Historic District are named for him.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The Wabash and Erie Canal in the 1840s stimulated trade and affirmed Lafayette's regional prominence. Railroads arrived in the town in the 1850s, connecting it with other major markets. The Monon Railroad connected Lafayette with other sections of Indiana.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Lafayette was the site of the first official airmail delivery in the United States on 17 August 1859, when John Wise piloted a balloon starting on the Lafayette courthouse grounds. Wise hoped to reach New York; however, weather conditions forced the balloon down near Crawfordsville, Indiana, and the mail reached its final destination by train. In 1959, the US Postal Service issued a 7¢ airmail stamp commemorating the centennial of the event.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Lafayette is located at (40.410585, −86.874681) and is located in Fairfield and Wea Townships. Elevation at the court house is , but city elevations range from a little over at the Wabash River to approximately in the areas of Murdock Park and Columbian Park.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: In recent years, temperatures in Lafayette have ranged from an average low of in January to a high of in July, although a record low of was recorded in January 1985 and again in January 1994; and a record high of was recorded in June 1988. Average monthly precipitation ranged from in February to in June.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Lafayette is the larger principal city of the Lafayette-Frankfort CSA, a Combined Statistical Area that includes the Lafayette metropolitan area (Benton, Carroll, and Tippecanoe counties) and the Frankfort micropolitan area (Clinton County), which had a combined population of 212,408 at the 2000 United States Census.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: As of the 2010 United States Census, there were 67,140 people, 28,545 households, and 15,863 families in the city. The population density was . There were 31,260 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 74.2% White, 11.2% African American, 0.4% Native American, 1% Asian, 0.0% from other races, and 2.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 16.3% of the population.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: There were 28,545 households, of which 29.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 36.7% were married couples living together, 13.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.2% had a male householder with no wife present, and 44.4% were non-families. 34.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.30 and the average family size was 3.00.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The median age in the city was 31.9 years. 23.8% of residents were under the age of 18; 12.9% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 29.9% were from 25 to 44; 22.2% were from 45 to 64, and 11.3% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.7% male and 51.3% female.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: As of the 2000 United States Census, there were 56,397 people, 24,060 households, and 13,666 families in the city. The population density was . There were 25,602 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 88.91% White; 3.22% African American; 0.37% Native American; 1.22% Asian; 0.04% Pacific Islander; 4.61% from other races, and 1.62% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 9.11% of the population.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: There were 24,060 households, out of which 27.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them; 42.5% were married couples living together; 10.2% had a female householder with no husband present; and 43.2% were non-families. 33.2% of all households were made up of individuals, and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.31 individuals and the average family size was 2.98.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The city population contained 23.2% under the age of 18; 14.2% from 18 to 24; 31.3% from 25 to 44; 19.3% from 45 to 64; and 12.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 32 years. For every 100 females, there were 97.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.3 males.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The median income for a household in the city was $35,859, and the median income for a family was $45,480. Males had a median income of $32,892 versus $23,049 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,217. About 8.0% of families and 12.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.8% of those under age 18 and 4.6% of those age 65 or over.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The government consists of a mayor – elected in a citywide vote – and a city council of nine members. Six are elected from individual districts; three are elected at-large.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: K-12 public education in Lafayette is provided by the Lafayette School Corporation. The Tippecanoe School Corporation also administers county schools nearby. New Community School was a tuition-free elementary charter school (sponsored by Ball State University) located on the north side of Lafayette that permanently closed at the end of 2016. Beacon Academy was a charter school that was located in West Lafayette and closed in 2018.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: From 1953 until the 2016 launch of WPBI-LD, WLFI-TV had been the only "Big Three" (ABC, CBS and NBC—or, including Fox, "big four") commercial network television broadcaster in the Lafayette market. With the 2017 launch of WPBY-LD, local broadcasts of all "big four" networks became available.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: WRTV, WTHR, WTTV, and WXIN, the respective ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox affiliates in Indianapolis which had been carried by cable and satellite providers in the Lafayette market as "out-of-market" stations, remain viewable in the area via a large over-the-air antenna or, in some cases, via a subscription satellite or streaming service. Cable provider Comcast Xfinity discontinued its remaining carriage of Indianapolis-based "big four" stations on March 7, 2018, but resumed carriage of WTHR and WRTV two days later.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: No airports are located within Lafayette city limits. The nearest general aviation airport is Purdue University Airport (LAF) in West Lafayette. The nearest commercial airport which currently has scheduled airline service is Indianapolis International Airport (IND), located approximately southeast of Lafayette in Indianapolis.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides passenger rail service to Lafayette through the "Cardinal" to Chicago, Washington D.C., and New York City. Norfolk Southern; CSX; Kankakee, Beaverville and Southern Railroad; and Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway (RailAmerica) provide freight rail service. Many lines that originally passed through the downtown were redirected in the mid-1990s to a rail corridor near the Wabash River.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: Much of the area's economy centers around the academic and industrial activities of Purdue University, although private industry and commerce independent of the university also exist in the community, with multiple large manufacturing operations in the city employing thousands of workers. Some examples:


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: 10 minutes North of Lafayette lies Prophet Rock, where the Prophet Tenskwatawa, the half brother of Tecumseh, stood watch encouraging the local Shawnee Native Americans to fight against the encamped army forces of William Henry Harrison in the Battle Of Tippecanoe in 1811. Tenskwatawa was a spiritual leader, but not a military man. His brother was out of town as the U.S. Army forces marched North, with hopes to destroy Prophetstown. Tenskwatawa had sought to have a meeting with Harrison to discuss how to avoid going to war. In the evening before the war, he sought a spiritual vision that led him to believe that Harrison must be assassinated. Early in the morning of November 6, the warriors attacked Harrison's militia and war ensued. The warriors fell weak in supplies against the militia, and succumbed. Prophetstown was taken over where the militia stole supplies and burnt it down. The rock where Tenskwatawa stood still stands over the battlefield, though now covered with much taller trees. The rock can be accessed by scaling its front or by hiking the ridge that leads to the top.


title: Lafayette, Indiana

text: The Martin Jenners headstone is at the Spring Vale Cemetery in Lafayette. Jenners was a Civil War veteran who was known as the first white person born in Tippecanoe County and as an outspoken atheist. Originally located in Greenbush Cemetery, his headstone is unique because he had it placed in the cemetery fourteen years before his death, with this inscription: "My only objection to religion is that it is not true. No preaching, no praying, no psalm singing on this lot." Jenners' headstone cites two verses that contradict each other, hence making the Bible untrue: I Corinthians 15:52, which talks about believers being raised from the dead "in a twinkling of an eye", and Isaiah 26:14, which states "They are now dead, they live no more; their spirits do not rise." The headstone received national attention at the time, despite attempts to have it removed, and it continued to draw visitors from around the country. Jenners' headstone inscription has been cited by believers as an example of Bible writings being taken out of context.


title: Sports car racing

text: Sports car racing is a form of motorsport road racing which utilises sports cars that have two seats and enclosed wheels. They may be purpose-built prototypes or grand tourers based on road-going models. Broadly speaking, sports car racing is one of the main types of circuit auto racing, alongside open-wheel single-seater racing (such as Formula One), touring car racing (such as the British Touring Car Championship, which is based on 'saloon cars' as opposed to the 'exotics' seen in sports cars) and stock car racing (such as NASCAR). Sports car races are often, though not always, endurance races that are run over relatively large distances, and there is usually a larger emphasis placed on the reliability and efficiency of the car as opposed to outright speed of the driver. The FIA World Endurance Championship is an example of a sports car racing series.


title: Sports car racing

text: A type of hybrid between the purism of open-wheelers and the familiarity of touring car racing, this style is often associated with the annual 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race. First run in 1923, Le Mans is one of the oldest motor races still in existence. Other classic but now defunct sports car races include the Italian classics, the Targa Florio (1906–1977) and Mille Miglia (1927–1957), and the Mexican Carrera Panamericana (1950–1954). Most top class sports car races emphasise endurance (typically between 3 and 24 hours), reliability, and strategy, over pure speed. Longer races usually involve complex pit strategy and regular driver changes. As a result, sports car racing is seen more as a team endeavour than an individual sport, with team managers such as John Wyer, Tom Walkinshaw, driver-turned-constructor Henri Pescarolo, Peter Sauber and Reinhold Joest becoming almost as famous as some of their drivers.


title: Sports car racing

text: The prestige of storied marques such as Porsche, Audi, Chevrolet, Ferrari, Jaguar, Bentley, Aston Martin, Lotus, Maserati, Lamborghini, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW is built in part upon success in sports car racing and the World Sportscar Championship. These makers' top road cars have often been very similar both in engineering and styling to those raced. This close association with the 'exotic' nature of the cars serves as a useful distinction between sports car racing and touring cars.


title: Sports car racing

text: The 12 Hours of Sebring, 24 Hours of Daytona, and 24 Hours of Le Mans were once widely considered the trifecta of sports car racing. Ken Miles would have been the only driver to ever win all three in the same year, but an error in Ford's team orders at 1966 Le Mans cost him the win.


title: Sports car racing

text: According to historian Richard Hough, "It is obviously impossible to distinguish between the designers of sports cars and Grand Prix machines during the pre-1914 period. The late Georges Faroux contended that sports-car racing was not born until the first 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1923, and while as a joint-creator of that race he may have been prejudiced in his opinion, it is certainly true that sports-car racing as it was known after 1919 did not exist before the First World War."


title: Sports car racing

text: In the 1920s, the cars used in endurance racing and Grand Prix were still basically identical, with fenders and two seats, to carry a mechanic if necessary or permitted. Cars such as the Bugatti Type 35 were almost equally at home in Grands Prix and endurance events, but specialisation gradually started to differentiate the sports-racer from the Grand Prix car. The legendary Alfa Romeo Tipo A Monoposto started the evolution of the true single-seater in the early 1930s; the Grand Prix racer and its miniature voiturette offspring rapidly evolved into high performance single seaters optimised for relatively short races, by dropping fenders and the second seat. During the later 1930s, French constructors, unable to keep up with the progress of the Mercedes-Benz and Auto-Union cars in GP racing, withdrew into primarily domestic competition with large-capacity sports cars – marques such as Delahaye, Talbot and the later Bugattis were locally prominent.


title: Sports car racing

text: Similarly, through the 1920s and 1930s the road-going sports/GT car started to emerge as distinct from fast tourers (Le Mans had originally been a race for touring cars) and sports cars, whether descended from primarily road-going vehicles or developed from pure-bred racing cars came to dominate races such as Le Mans and the Mille Miglia.


title: Sports car racing

text: In open-road endurance races across Europe such as the Mille Miglia, Tour de France and Targa Florio, which were often run on dusty roads, the need for fenders and a mechanic or navigator was still there. As mainly Italian cars and races defined the genre, the category came to be known as Gran Turismo (particularly in the 1950s), as long distances had to be travelled, rather than running around on short circuits only. Reliability and some basic comfort were necessary in order to endure the task.


title: Sports car racing

text: After the Second World War, sports car racing emerged as a distinct form of racing with its own classic races, and, from 1953, its own FIA sanctioned World Sportscar Championship. In the 1950s, sports car racing was regarded as almost as important as Grand Prix competition, with major marques like Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar and Aston Martin investing much effort in their works programmes and supplying cars to customers; sports racers lost their close relationship to road-going sports cars in the 1950s and the major races were contested by dedicated competition cars such as the Jaguar C and D types, the Mercedes 300SLR, Maserati 300S, Aston Martin DBR1 and assorted Ferraris including the first Testa Rossas. Top Grand Prix drivers also competed regularly in sports car racing. After major accidents at the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans and the 1957 Mille Miglia the power of sports cars was curbed with a 3-litre engine capacity limit applied to them in the World Championship from 1958. From 1962 sports cars temporarily took a back seat to GT cars with the FIA replacing the World Championship for Sports Cars with the International Championship for GT Manufacturers.


title: Sports car racing

text: In national rather than international racing, sports car competition in the 1950s and early 1960s tended to reflect what was locally popular, with the cars that were successful locally often influencing each nation's approach to competing on the international stage.


title: Sports car racing

text: In the US, imported Italian, German and British cars battled local hybrids, with initially very distinct East and West Coast scenes; these gradually converged and a number of classic races and important teams emerged including Camoradi, Briggs Cunningham and so on. The US scene tended to feature small MG and Porsche cars in the smaller classes, and imported Jaguar, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Allard and Ferrari cars in the larger classes.


title: Sports car racing

text: A breed of powerful hybrids appeared in the 50s and 60s and raced on both sides of the Atlantic, featuring European chassis and large American engines – from the early Allard cars via hybrids such as Lotus 19s fitted with large engines through to the AC Cobra. The combination of mostly British chassis and American V8 engines gave rise to the popular and spectacular Can-Am series in the 1960s and 1970s.


title: Sports car racing

text: In Britain 2-litre sports cars were initially popular (the Bristol engine being readily available and cheap), subsequently 1100 cc sports racers became a very popular category for young drivers (effectively supplanting 500 cc F3), with Lola, Lotus, Cooper and others being very competitive, although at the other end of the scale in the early to mid-1960s the national sports racing scene also attracted sophisticated GTs and later a crop of large-engined "big bangers" the technology of which largely gave rise to Can-Am but soon died out. Clubmans provided much entertainment at club-racing level from the 1960s into the 1990s and John Webb revived interest in big sports prototypes with Thundersports in the 1980s. There was even enough interest in Group C to sustain a C2 championship for a few years; at 'club' level Modified Sports Car ("ModSports") and Production Sports Car ("ProdSports") races remained a feature of most British race meetings into the 1980s, evolving into a "Special GT" series that was essentially Formula Libre for sports or saloon cars. After a relative period of decline in the 1980s a British GT Championship emerged in the mid-90s.


title: Sports car racing

text: Italy found itself with both grassroots racing with a plethora of Fiat based specials (often termed "etceterinis") and small Alfa Romeos, and exotica such as Maserati and Ferrari – who also sold cars to domestic customers as well as racing on the world stage. Road races such as the Mille Miglia included everything from stock touring cars to World Championship contenders. The Mille Miglia was the largest sporting event in Italy until a fatal accident caused its demise in 1957. The Targa Florio, another tough road race, remained part of the world championship until the 1970s and remained as a local race for many years afterwards.


title: Sports car racing

text: As the French car industry switched from making large powerful cars to small utilitarian ones, French sports cars of the 1950s and early 1960s tended to be small-capacity and highly aerodynamic (often based on Panhard or Renault components), aimed at winning the "Index of Performance" at Le Mans and Reims and triumphing in handicap races. Between the late 1960s and late 1970s, Matra and Renault made significant and successful efforts to win at Le Mans.


title: Sports car racing

text: In Germany, domestic production based racing was largely dominated by BMW, Porsche and Mercedes-Benz, although sports car/GT racing gradually became eclipsed by touring cars and the initially sports car based Deutsche Rennsport Meisterschaft gradually evolved into the Deutsche Tourenwagen Meisterschaft. Porsche started to evolve a line of sports prototypes from the late 1950s; noted for their toughness and reliability they started to win in races of attrition such as the Targa Florio and as they grew bigger (via the Porsche 910 to the Porsche 908 and finally the Porsche 917) the Stuttgart marque became first a competitor for overall wins and then came to dominate sports car racing – both they and Mercedes have made intermittent returns to the top level of the sport through the 1970s, 80s, 90s and 2010s.


title: Sports car racing

text: Sports car racing has intermittently been popular in Japan – in the 1960s small-capacity sports racers and even a local version of the Group 7 cars as raced in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup were popular; a healthy local sports prototype championship ran until the early 1990s and now the Super GT series provides high-budget exposure to manufacturers, with many international drivers appearing. The Japanese manufacturers have also been frequent visitors to the US sports car scene (Nissan and Toyota in particular during the heyday of IMSA) and to the European scene, in particular Le Mans, where despite many years of trying by all the main Japanese marques the only victory to have been scored by a Japanese marque was by Mazda in 1991, until 2018 when Toyota scored a first and second-place finish. Toyota followed this with another 1-2 finish in 2019.


title: Sports car racing

text: Powerful prototypes (effectively pure-bred two-seater racing cars with no real link to production vehicles) started to appear as the 1960s progressed, with worldwide battles between Ferrari, Ford, Porsche, Lotus, Alfa Romeo and Matra as well as other more specialist marques running on into the early 1970s. The competition at Le Mans even made it to the movie screens, with Steve McQueen's film Le Mans. This era was seen by many as the highpoint of sports car racing, with the technology and performance of the cars comfortably in excess of what was seen in Formula 1. Homologation saw many out-and-out racing cars produced in sufficient quantities to see them classed as production vehicles; the FIA responded by placing more restrictions on even the allegedly production-based cars and placed draconian limits on the power available to prototypes – these prototypes of the late 1960s/early 1970s were comfortably quicker than contemporary Grand Prix machinery and for 1972 they were constrained to run much smaller engines to F1 rules, often de-tuned for endurance. Group 4 Grand Touring Cars and Group 5 Special Production Cars became the premier form of "sports car" racing from 1976, with prototypes going into a general decline apart from Porsche 936 domination at Le Mans and a lower-key series of races for smaller two-litre Group 6 prototypes.


title: Sports car racing

text: A peculiarly American form of sports car racing was the Can-Am series, in which virtually unlimited sports prototypes competed in relatively short races. This series ran from 1966 to 1974 and was an expansion of the USRRC that conformed to FIA Group 7 rules. The original Can-Am fell victim to rising costs and the energy crisis.


title: Sports car racing

text: The ACO, organisers of the Le Mans 24 Hours, attempted to come up with a formula that would encourage more prototypes back to the race but would also be relatively economical – their Grand Touring Prototype rules in the late 1970s, based on fuel consumption rules, gave rise to two different varieties of sports car racing that were widely held to be a high point in the history of the sport.


title: Sports car racing

text: In Europe, the FIA adopted the ACO GTP rules virtually unchanged and sanctioned the Group C World Endurance Championship (or World Sportscar Championship), featuring high-tech closed-cockpit prototypes from Porsche, Aston Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Jaguar and others. In the US, the IMSA Camel GTP series boasted close competition between huge fields of manufacturer-backed teams and privateer squads – the cars were technically similar to Group Cs but used a sliding scale of weights and engine capacities to try to limit performance. Both Group C and GTP had secondary categories, respectively Group C2 and Camel Lights, for less powerful cars, targeting entries by small specialist constructors or serious amateur teams.


title: Sports car racing

text: The FIA attempted to make Group C into a virtual "two seater Grand Prix" format in the early 1990s, with engine rules in common with F1, short race distances, and a schedule dovetailing with that of the F1 rounds. This drove up costs and drove away entrants and crowds, and by 1993 prototype racing was dead in Europe, with the Peugeot, Jaguar, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz teams all having withdrawn.


title: Sports car racing

text: In an attempt to provide a top-class endurance racing series to replace the WSPC, a number of GT series sprung up at national and European level, with the BPR series eventually evolving into the FIA GT Championship. IMSA GTP continued for a few more years but was replaced by a series for World Sports Cars – relatively simple open-top prototypes – which gave rise to cars such as the Ferrari 333SP and the Riley & Scott Mk 3, supported by GTs. As the 1990s progressed, these prototypes and others like them started to be raced in Europe and an FIA Sports Car series evolved for them.


title: Sports car racing

text: Since the demise of Group C (where Japan and Germany both had successful series of their own) Japan has largely gone its own way in sports car racing; the Super GT series is for very highly modified production-based cars; although prototypes are slowly returning to Japanese racing in the Japan Le Mans Challenge many of these 'prototypes' are little more than rebodied Formula 3 cars (although there has been a long Japanese tradition of such hybrids; a Grand Champion series ran for many years with rebodied Formula 2 and Formula 3000 cars, rather similar to the second incarnation of Can-Am).


title: Sports car racing

text: In the US, however, road racing actually saw a decline. The IMSA GT Championship had been prototype-based since 1983, with less emphasis on production cars. NASCAR was becoming increasingly dominant, and the IndyCar Series' split from CART in 1996 put more emphasis on ovals regarding domestic open-wheel racing. Also contributing to the decline was the retirement of Mario Andretti from Formula One. It would be over a decade before another American driver would join Formula One, viz. Scott Speed, although Speed was ultimately unsuccessful and eventually joined NASCAR himself.


title: Sports car racing

text: The debut of the SpeedVision television network brought a resurgence of interest in sports car racing in the US, with the network originally showing a large amount of sports car racing and sports car–related programming before being replaced by Fox Sports.


title: Sports car racing

text: The IMSA GT Series evolved into the American Le Mans Series; the European races eventually became the closely related Le Mans Series, both of which mix prototypes and GTs; the FIA remains more interested in its own GT and GT3 championships, with the ACO's rules the basis for the LMS and ALMS. The Le Mans Prototype is somewhat reminiscent of the old Can Am prototype.


title: Sports car racing

text: Further splits in the American scene saw the Grand American Road Racing Association form a separate series, the Rolex Sports Car Series, with its own GT and prototype rules aimed at providing cheaper, lower-cost racing for independent teams. Grand Am's Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge, a support series for the Rolex Series, provides a similar series to the old Trans Am Series, mixing conventional sports cars and touring cars. Due to Grand Am's affiliation with NASCAR, many NASCAR drivers occasionally participate in the Rolex Sports Car Series. Max Papis is a notable example in that he was a road racer prior to his tenure in the Sprint Cup Series. Many of these drivers only participate in the 24 Hours of Daytona.


title: Sports car racing

text: The original Trans-Am Series dissolved in 2006, but returned to action in 2009 with tube frame TA1 and TA2 divisions racing with production-based TA3-American and TA3-International divisions. In addition, the SCCA continues to provide a major support series for Trans-Am. This series, known as the SCCA World Challenge, consists of a one-hour race for each round, combining three classes: GT (Chevrolet Corvette, Aston Martin DB9, etc.), "GTS" (Acura TSX, BMW 3 Series, etc.; replaced the former touring car class), and Touring Car (a "showroom stock" class similar to Grand Am's Continental Challenge). The Trans Am series returned in 2009, but has yet to establish a television contract.


title: Sports car racing

text: The 2010s have seen a major overhaul of sports car racing in the United States. The Pirelli World Challenge reformatted in 2010 to have a showroom stock touring car group comparable to that of the Continental Challenge's Grand Sport class, promoting its other touring car class to "GTS". This came after several years of the old TC class being an Acura-BMW-Mazda affair. For 2012, the series adopted a "B-spec" touring car class comparable to that of the Continental Challenge's Street Tuner class.


title: Sports car racing

text: 2010 also saw the introduction of the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC) by the ACO, featuring events in America, Asia and Europe. This in turn led the ACO & FIA to come together to create the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) starting in 2012. This new series replaced the ILMC and was a spiritual successor to the former FIA World Sportscar Championship.


title: Sports car racing

text: In 2012, the Rolex Sports Car Series overhauled its Daytona Prototype class, allowing for production-based designs.


title: Sports car racing

text: The ALMS's new LMP/LMC format, however, has not held up. The prototype classes split again in 2011, with LMP1 having three cars and LMP2 having one. A new "GT Pro Am" class was added. Initially, this format was only to be used in endurance races, but was eventually applied to all races. For 2012, only a handful of LMPs are being entered, with almost all of them being powered by Japanese manufacturers (Nissan, Honda, etc.). The British manufacturer Morgan has entered a Judd-powered LMP. Aston Martin Racing, who for several years had entered an LMP, has returned to GT for 2012.


title: Sports car racing

text: The reformatted Trans-Am Series remained stagnant, being heavily overshadowed by the SCCA's World Challenge, and failing to garner a television contract. A major factor in this is the fact that Trans Am's teams still use vehicles dating back to 1999. In most other series, teams tended to update their vehicles every few years or so (examples include the 2005 vs. 2010 Mustangs in the Continental Challenge and the two different generations of Mazda RX-8 in the Rolex Series).


title: Sports car racing

text: Other television changes include Speed Channel losing the rights to almost every series. The World Challenge was transferred to Versus, while the ALMS was transferred to an ESPN/ABC partnership. ALMS races are shown live online with a telecast the following day (although Speed still has the rights to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, which is still televised live). For 2012, some races will be televised live. Speed, having a partnership with NASCAR, still has exclusive rights to the NASCAR-owned Grand Am series.


title: Sports car racing

text: In 2014, American Le Mans Series and Rolex Sports Car Series were merged into United SportsCar Championship, with IMSA as its sanctioning body. Fox Sports 1 (successor of Speed Channel) was returned as main broadcaster of the unified series.


title: Sports car racing

text: Daytona Prototype was replaced in 2017 by Daytona Prototype International (DPi), which based on the four ACO homologated LMP2 chassis made by Dallara, Onroak (Ligier), Oreca, and Riley-Multimatic, with brand bodywork and homologated engines. Manufacturers are asked to partner with a privateer team, and each car will sport manufacturer bodywork, corresponding to their brand-identity. These rules are made to both control costs and attract manufacturers to the series.


title: Sports car racing

text: In 2018, SRO Motorsports Group has taken over the management of Pirelli World Challenge, with USAC as its sanctioning body since 2017.


title: Sports car racing

text: Beginning in 2019, NBC Sports will be replacing Fox Sports as main broadcaster of WeatherTech SportsCar Championship with six-year broadcasting rights.


title: Sports car racing

text: There are many kinds of sports cars that compete, but they can be broadly broken down into two main categories: Sports prototypes and Grand Touring (GT). These two categories (or "classes") are often mixed together in a single race, such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In mixed-class races an overall winner is awarded, but also individual class winners are often recognised.


title: Sports car racing

text: Sports prototype is the name given to a type of car used in sports car racing and is effectively the next automotive design and technological step up from road-going sports cars and are, along with open-wheel cars, the pinnacle of racing-car design.


title: Sports car racing

text: The highest level in sports car racing, these cars are purpose-built racing cars with enclosed wheels, and either open or closed cockpits. Since the World Sportscar Championship was conceived there have been various regulations regarding bodywork, engine style and size, tyres and aerodynamics to which these cars must be built. Sports-prototypes may be (and often are) one-of-a-kind machines, and need bear no relation to any road-going vehicle, although during the 1990s some manufacturers exploited a loophole in the FIA and ACO rules which meant cars racing in the GT category were actually true sports-prototypes and sired some road-going versions for homologation purposes. The Dauer-Porsche 962LM, Porsche 911 GT1-98, Mercedes CLK-GTR and Toyota GT-One were prime examples of prototypes masquerading as GTs.


title: Sports car racing

text: In simplistic terms, sports-prototypes are two-seat racing cars with bodywork covering their wheels, and are as technically advanced and, depending on the regulations they are built to, as quick as or quicker than their single-seat counterparts. Although not widely known, sports-prototypes (along with Formula 1 cars) are responsible for introducing the most numbers of new technologies and ideas to motorsport, including rear-wings, ground effect 'venturi' tunnels, fan-assisted aerodynamics and dual-shift gearboxes. Some of these technologies eventually filter down to road cars.


title: Sports car racing

text: In the ACO regulations, two categories of sports-prototypes are now recognised: P1 and P2. Cars competing in the P1 category must weigh no less than 900 kg and are limited to 6000 cc naturally aspirated and 4000 cc turbocharged engines. 5500 cc turbo-Diesel engines are also permitted in P1 – Audi scored Le Mans victories with such a car in 2006, 2007 and 2008 and Peugeot returned to racing in 2007 with a car with a similar powerplant (Peugeot 908). P2 cars can weigh much less — first 675 kg, then 750 kg and now 825 kg — but are restricted to 3400 cc V6 or V8 normally aspirated or 2000 cc turbocharged powerplants. In the European series in which endurance is a priority and P2s have been run largely by privateers, P2s have not challenged P1s for outright victories; in the American Le Mans Series with generally shorter races P2 has become the most active prototype category with serious involvement from Porsche and Acura and whereas P2 in Europe tends to involve races of attrition, in the US series the P2s, particularly the Porsche RS Spyder are often quicker round a lap than P1s, with the Porsche having scored many overall victories against the Audis in P1.


title: Sports car racing

text: Prototype rules for 2010 and beyond will encourage production-based engines (GT1 engines in LMP1, GT2 engines in LMP2) and rules to equalise the performance of petrol and diesel LMP1s are also being addressed.


title: Sports car racing

text: Daytona Prototypes are a product of the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series, and offer a different interpretation of the prototype theme. DPs, as they are often called, are closed-cockpit, purpose-built racing machines which are less expensive and (deliberately) somewhat slower than Le Mans Prototypes, which were becoming dangerously quick on the Daytona oval and prohibitively expensive for smaller teams to run. Compared to the LMPs, DPs are severely limited in terms of approved technology; for instance, they are required to be constructed of steel tube frames with carbon-fibre skins, rather than being carbon-fibre monocoques, and must use production-based engines. In addition, contrary to their European counterparts who continuously alter and develop a vehicle to increase performance as a season progresses, DPs are restricted to their original conception of the car from the start of the season. For these reasons, the category being labeled as a "prototype" has occasionally been criticised as misleading and being more in line with traditional "spec" race series prevalent in the United States. The intention of the DP formula was to provide a class in which tight technical regulations encouraged close competition and where budget would be relatively unimportant. DP chassis are subject to a franchise-like approval system in which only approved constructors are eligible, with rules stability enforced for several years at a time, although this led in 2007 to established constructors like Lola and Dallara entering the 2008 series by taking over the rights of existing constructors (Multimatic and Doran respectively).


title: Sports car racing

text: Grand Touring (from the Italian "Gran Turismo") racing is the most common form of sports car racing, and is found all over the world, in both international and national series. Historically, Grand Touring cars had to be in series production, but in 1976 the class was split into production-based Group 4 Grand Touring Cars and Group 5 Special Production Cars, the latter of which were essentially pure-bred racing cars with production-lookalike bodies. GT racing gradually fell into abeyance in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s, with silhouette cars continuing to race in IMSA races in the USA. When GT racing revived after the collapse of the World Sports Car Championship at the end of 1992, the lead in defining rules was taken by the ACO. Under the ACO rules, Grand Touring cars are divided into two categories, Grand Touring 1 (GT1, formerly GT) and Grand Touring 2 (GT2, formerly N-GT). As the name of the class implies, the exterior of the car closely resembles that of the production version, while the internal fittings may differ greatly. GT2 cars are very similar to the FIA GT2 classification, and are 'pure' GT cars; that is production exotic cars with relatively few internal modifications for racing. The Porsche 911 is currently the most popular car in the GT2 class. 2009 will be the last run of the GT1 class as a result of budgeting issues. GT1 teams are currently enlisting to run their cars in the GT2 class next year. The American Le Mans Series also runs a "GT-Challenge" class, which currently only uses Porsche 911 GT3 Cups but will open to other cars next year. This category is designed for privateer and rookie teams as an easier way to enter the series.


title: Sports car racing

text: For 2011, the ACO split GT2 into two categories, GTE-Pro (for all-professional teams with current-spec cars) and GTE-Am (for teams with one amateur and one professional per car using previous-spec cars), as a way to entice rookies to enter one of the three Le Mans Series.


title: Sports car racing

text: FIA divides GT cars into four categories called GT1 (formerly GT), GT2 (formerly N-GT), GT3 (recently introduced) and GT4. The GT1 and GT2 divisions are very close to the ACO rules outlined above, and again some crossover racing does occur, particularly in the GT2 class. The GT3 class is relatively new and was introduced for 2006. These cars are closer to standard form than in GT2, and in most cases modifications are restricted to those found in one-make cups. GT4 is another new category for non-professional drivers in production-based cars with very few racing modifications – for example, no aerodynamic aids or body modifications are permitted. All of the categories (with the exception of GT2) have their own championships/cups run by the FIA. Currently, GT2 is defunct in the FIA, and only runs in Le Mans Series/ALMS; however, the FIA has also announced that GT2 cars will be able to compete in the FIA GT1 World Championship in 2012 in a World Class along with GT3 cars.


title: Sports car racing

text: Grand-Am has only one class for Grand Touring cars which allows production-based GT racers at a spec somewhere between FIA GT2 and GT3 in terms of modification (e.g. the Porsche 911 GT3 Cup) to compete with purpose-built tube-frame "silhouette" machines reminiscent of the former IMSA GTO/GTU classes. Grand-Am also runs various under-classes more reminiscent of GT4, though closer to factory cars. For 2012, GT3 cars will be allowed, with spec wings and splitters, as long as they pass a test at the NASCAR Research and Development Center in Concord, North Carolina, thus allowing GT3 cars to run with few modifications relative to other series (NASCAR, the parent company of Grand-Am, does not permit anti-lock brakes or traction control to be used on Grand-Am GT cars).


title: Sports car racing

text: , the four GT categories are in mixed health. GT1 has been all but phased out with the removal of the class from the FIA GT1 World Championship and later the discontinuation of the series. GT2 is used by the IMSA SportsCar Championship, European Le Mans Series, FIA World Endurance Championship, Asian Le Mans Series, and the International GT Open. GT3, currently the most popular of the GT classes, is used by the FIA GT3 European Championship, Blancpain Endurance Series, and most national series such as ADAC GT Masters or the British GT Championship. GT4 has also been phased out like GT1 with the removal of the category from the Blancpain Endurance Series and the cancellation of the GT4 European Cup for 2012 due to issues regarding the organiser.


title: Sports car racing

text: While GT cars are at least in theory based on road-going models, some GT1 cars in the mid to late 1990s were effectively purpose-built sports-prototypes which spawned exotic production cars with homologation production limits of 25 cars (for small-scale manufacturers, such as Saleen) or 100 cars (for major manufacturers like Daimler AG).


title: Sports car racing

text: The original form of GT1 racing was dropped in 1998 because of rising costs. The GT1 class was for the purebred supercars and purpose-built race cars, such as the McLaren F1 GTR, Ferrari F40, Porsche 911 GT1, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, Toyota GT-One and Nissan R390 – while the first two were a derivatives of road-going sports cars, the German and Japanese contenders were pure-bred racing cars – virtually sports prototypes. Rising costs coupled with declining entries led to the death of this class, and it was replaced by what is called GT2 (FIA, which later evolved into the GT1) and Le Mans Prototype (LMP, by the ACO).


title: Sports car racing

text: This process is due to happen again in 2009 as a response to cost increases in GT1 and GT2 racing: for the 2009 season, GT1 and GT2 as they currently stand will be abolished. Various proposals exist to control technology and costs, mainly by abolishing the existing GT1 class and creating new class boundaries between current GT2, GT3 and GT4 cars.


title: Sports car racing

text: Sports car racing in general extends far beyond ACO and FIA rules, encompassing the Grand-Am professional series as well as amateur road racing classes in the Sports Car Club of America in North America.


title: Sports car racing

text: Amateur sports car racing throughout the United States is sanctioned by clubs such as the Sports Car Club of America. The SCCA's sports-racing classes include C and D Sports Racing, Sports 2000 and Spec Racer Ford, in descending order of speed and sophistication, as well as a number of production-based and one-make classes.


title: Sports car racing

text: In Japan, the Super GT series divides cars into two classes, called GT500 and GT300. These cars are less restricted than their European and American counterparts, with cars often sporting tube frame clips and forced induction kits. Teams are also free to change engines with other models made by the manufacturer. The numbers in the classifications refer to the maximum power (in horsepower) available to each class; this is achieved through the use of engine restrictors. Proponents of the series claim that the Super GT cars are the fastest sports cars in the world, while critics deride the cars as being outside the limits of 'acceptable' modifications. In recent years however, rule changes in both GT500 and GT1 (aimed at eventually allowing both classes to compete with each other in the future) have brought the cars closer to each other, although GT500 cars still have a notable advantage in terms of aerodynamics and cornering performance (enough to compensate for GT1 cars greater power).


title: Sports car racing

text: In Europe, although most national championships (British, French, German and the Spanish-based International GT Open) run under FIA/ACO GT regulations with some modifications to ensure closer racing and lower costs, some championships are open to non-homologated GT cars. The Belcar series in Belgium allows silhouettes and touring cars to race alongside GTs, while the VdeV Modern Endurance allows small prototypes from national championships such as the Norma, Centenari and Radical to race alongside GT3 class cars. Britcar permits a wide range of touring and GT cars to compete in endurance races, and Britsports permits various kinds of sports racer.


title: Fade into You

text: "Fade into You" is a song by American alternative rock band Mazzy Star from their second studio album, "So Tonight That I Might See" (1993). The song was written by lyricist Hope Sandoval and composer David Roback, who also served as producer. The song reached number three on the US "Billboard" Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1994 and is Mazzy Star's only single to appear on the "Billboard" Hot 100, peaking at number 44. The song also charted at number 48 on the UK Singles Chart and number three in Iceland. In 2021, "Rolling Stone" ranked it 468th on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". "Pitchfork" included the song at number 19 on their "Top 200 Tracks of the 90s". Australian alternative music radio station Triple J ranked the song the 32nd greatest of 1994.


title: Fade into You

text: Two music videos were made for "Fade into You". The first was directed by Kevin Kerslake and premiered on MTV in late October 1993, several weeks after the album's release. The video features the band performing in front of a projection screen depicting white clouds in a black sky, and is interlaced with slow-motion footage of the band in various locales in the Mojave Desert. Portions of this video were filmed at the same location U2 shot the artwork for "The Joshua Tree".


title: Fade into You

text: The second music video was directed by Merlyn Rosenberg and first aired in February 1994. Known as the Black and White version for its monochromic content throughout, the intentionally grainy, distorted footage shows the band performing in a darkened Burlesque-era ballroom, and is interspersed with footage of Sandoval and Roback at various sites around San Francisco, including the All Seasons Hotel (now the Crescent Hotel) and neighboring Stockton Street tunnel, coupled with genuine footage of the same sites shot in the 1930s. Only the latter music video was broadcast internationally.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Fabrice Ndala Muamba (born 6 April 1988) is an English former professional footballer who played for Arsenal, Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers as a central midfielder. Born in Zaire, Muamba moved to England at the age of 11 and subsequently played for England up to under-21 level.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba began his career in 2002, joining Arsenal's youth academy. After three years, he turned professional in 2005. He made his debut for Arsenal in the League Cup, but played only one other professional match for the club. Following a loan spell with Birmingham City, he made the move permanent in 2007. He stayed with Birmingham City for one additional year, and left after making more than 70 appearances and making his England under-21 debut while with the team. He joined Bolton Wanderers in 2008.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: In March 2012, Muamba suffered a cardiac arrest during a televised FA Cup match between Bolton and Tottenham Hotspur, from which he recovered despite his heart having stopped for 78 minutes. Following medical advice, he announced his retirement from professional football in August 2012. He later completed a degree in sports journalism before making a return to football as a youth coach.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba was born in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). His father fled the country in 1994 because of his political views and arrived in the United Kingdom seeking asylum. In 1999, he was granted indefinite leave to remain, at which time he was joined by the rest of the family. They settled in east London, where Muamba attended Kelmscott School in Walthamstow. Despite having arrived in Britain aged 11, unable to speak English, he went on to achieve 10 GCSEs and A-levels in English, French and mathematics.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba was associated with Arsenal's youth system as a schoolboy from 2002, joining their Academy as a first-year scholar in August 2004. He signed his first professional contract in October 2005 and made his first team debut on 25 October in a League Cup tie against Sunderland, in front of a 47,000 crowd at the Stadium of Light. He made his second and final first team appearance for Arsenal in the next round, against Reading, where he contributed to a 3–0 victory.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: In August 2006, Muamba joined Championship club Birmingham City on a season-long loan. After a slow start, his energetic style of play, which has been likened to that of his hero Patrick Vieira, established him as a regular starter in central midfield. The fans were equally impressed, voting him their Young Player of the Season.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 11 May 2007 Muamba made his move to Birmingham City permanent, signing a three-year contract for a fee reported by the club of £4 million. He scored his first goal for the club, a close-range volley from a corner, on 12 March 2008 in a 4–2 defeat at Portsmouth. He made 37 appearances as Birmingham were relegated from the Premier League after one season back in the top tier.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 16 June 2008, Muamba joined Premier League Bolton Wanderers for a fee of £5 million, with add-ons worth a further £750,000, on a four-year contract. He scored his first goal for the club against Wigan Athletic on 13 March 2010. In recognition of his impressive 2009–10 season at Bolton, he was named as "The Bolton News" Player of the Season. On 7 August, Muamba signed a new four-year contract with Bolton.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba scored on the opening day of the 2011–12 league season, in Bolton's 4–0 away win against Queens Park Rangers. He then scored his first ever goal in the League Cup, against his old club Arsenal in a 2–1 defeat.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 17 March 2012, Muamba suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed during the first half of an FA Cup quarter-final match between Bolton and Tottenham Hotspur at White Hart Lane. After receiving lengthy attention on the pitch from medical personnel – including a consultant cardiologist who was at the game as a fan – Muamba was taken to the specialist coronary care unit at the London Chest Hospital. Bolton manager Owen Coyle and club captain Kevin Davies accompanied Muamba in the ambulance. The match was abandoned by referee Howard Webb, and Bolton's next game, against Aston Villa, due to be played three days later, was postponed at the club's request. Aston Villa raised no objection.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Bolton's club doctor later confirmed that Muamba had received numerous defibrillator shocks both on the pitch and in the ambulance, but his heart had stopped for 78 minutes. The player was initially kept under anaesthesia in intensive care. By 19 March, his heart was beating without medication and he was able to move his limbs. Later that day his condition was described as "serious" rather than "critical" and he was able to recognise family members and respond appropriately to questions. By 21 March, his consultant suggested that Muamba's progress had "exceeded our expectations" and that although he faced a "lengthy recovery period", "normal life is within the spectrum of possibility".


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Two weeks after the incident, a photograph was released of Muamba sitting up in his hospital bed and smiling. He was discharged from hospital on 16 April, having been fitted with an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD). Muamba attended Bolton's home match against Tottenham Hotspur on 2 May, where he expressed his gratitude for the support he had received.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 15 August 2012, Bolton announced that Muamba had retired from professional football, based on the recommendation of his medical team. Muamba said:


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 8 November 2012, Muamba returned to White Hart Lane for the first time since his cardiac arrest and received a standing ovation from the crowd. Muamba later played 15 minutes in Ian Goodison's testimonial match in 2015.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Following his retirement from the game, Muamba was part of ITV's coverage of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations. He was also a co-commentator alongside Derek Rae on BT Sport's coverage of the African World Cup qualification third round play-offs.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba studied for a BA in sports journalism at Staffordshire University; as part of his course he went on work placement at BBC North West Tonight. In July 2015, he graduated with honours.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: In March 2015, Muamba took some coaching sessions at Liverpool's academy. In September 2018, he coached Rochdale's under-16 side while studying for his coaching badges, and in March 2022, he was reported to be hoping to make a return to Bolton Wanderers as an academy coach.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: On 14 May 2022, it was confirmed by Muamba that he had made the return to Bolton in an Academy coaching role.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: As a naturalised British citizen, Muamba was eligible to play for any of the Home Nations in which he had received three years of full-time education before the age of 18 or lived in for five years. In Muamba's case, that was just England, whom he represented at all youth levels, and captained the U-19 team. He received his first call-up for England U21 for the friendly against Romania U-21 on 21 August 2007 at Ashton Gate, Bristol, and made his debut as a second-half substitute.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba had also been called up to the DR Congo squad in May 2007, but declined so as to remain eligible for England.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: Muamba met Shauna Magunda while he was a Birmingham City player and she was studying for a master's degree at Birmingham City University. They became engaged on 14 February 2012, married at Peckforton Castle, Cheshire, on 21 October 2012, and, , have four children. Muamba has been described as "deeply religious", and stated he would have sought a career in accountancy had he not become a professional footballer.


title: Fabrice Muamba

text: In July 2012, the University of Bolton awarded an honorary doctorate to Muamba, which he accepted on behalf of those involved in saving his life. He took part in the 2012 Christmas Special edition of the BBC programme "Strictly Come Dancing".


title: NumPy

text: NumPy (pronounced () or sometimes ()) is a library for the Python programming language, adding support for large, multi-dimensional arrays and matrices, along with a large collection of high-level mathematical functions to operate on these arrays. The ancestor of NumPy, Numeric, was originally created by Jim Hugunin with contributions from several other developers. In 2005, Travis Oliphant created NumPy by incorporating features of the competing Numarray into Numeric, with extensive modifications. NumPy is open-source software and has many contributors. NumPy is a NumFOCUS fiscally sponsored project.


title: NumPy

text: The Python programming language was not originally designed for numerical computing, but attracted the attention of the scientific and engineering community early on. In 1995 the special interest group (SIG) "matrix-sig" was founded with the aim of defining an array computing package; among its members was Python designer and maintainer Guido van Rossum, who extended Python's syntax (in particular the indexing syntax) to make array computing easier.


title: NumPy

text: An implementation of a matrix package was completed by Jim Fulton, then generalized by Jim Hugunin and called "Numeric" (also variously known as the "Numerical Python extensions" or "NumPy").


title: NumPy

text: Hugunin, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), joined the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) in 1997 to work on JPython, leaving Paul Dubois of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to take over as maintainer. Other early contributors include David Ascher, Konrad Hinsen and Travis Oliphant.


title: NumPy

text: A new package called "Numarray" was written as a more flexible replacement for Numeric. Like Numeric, it too is now deprecated. Numarray had faster operations for large arrays, but was slower than Numeric on small ones, so for a time both packages were used in parallel for different use cases. The last version of Numeric (v24.2) was released on 11 November 2005, while the last version of numarray (v1.5.2) was released on 24 August 2006.


title: NumPy

text: There was a desire to get Numeric into the Python standard library, but Guido van Rossum decided that the code was not maintainable in its state then.


title: NumPy

text: In early 2005, NumPy developer Travis Oliphant wanted to unify the community around a single array package and ported Numarray's features to Numeric, releasing the result as NumPy 1.0 in 2006. This new project was part of SciPy. To avoid installing the large SciPy package just to get an array object, this new package was separated and called NumPy. Support for Python 3 was added in 2011 with NumPy version 1.5.0.


title: NumPy

text: In 2011, PyPy started development on an implementation of the NumPy API for PyPy. It is not yet fully compatible with NumPy.


title: NumPy

text: NumPy targets the CPython reference implementation of Python, which is a non-optimizing bytecode interpreter. Mathematical algorithms written for this version of Python often run much slower than compiled equivalents due to the absence of compiler optimization. NumPy addresses the slowness problem partly by providing multidimensional arrays and functions and operators that operate efficiently on arrays; using these requires rewriting some code, mostly inner loops, using NumPy.


title: NumPy

text: Using NumPy in Python gives functionality comparable to MATLAB since they are both interpreted, and they both allow the user to write fast programs as long as most operations work on arrays or matrices instead of scalars. In comparison, MATLAB boasts a large number of additional toolboxes, notably Simulink, whereas NumPy is intrinsically integrated with Python, a more modern and complete programming language. Moreover, complementary Python packages are available; SciPy is a library that adds more MATLAB-like functionality and Matplotlib is a plotting package that provides MATLAB-like plotting functionality. Internally, both MATLAB and NumPy rely on BLAS and LAPACK for efficient linear algebra computations.


title: NumPy

text: Python bindings of the widely used computer vision library OpenCV utilize NumPy arrays to store and operate on data.


title: NumPy

text: Since images with multiple channels are simply represented as three-dimensional arrays, indexing, or masking with other arrays are very efficient ways to access specific pixels of an image.


title: NumPy

text: The NumPy array as universal data structure in OpenCV for images, extracted feature points, filter kernels and many more vastly simplifies the programming workflow and debugging.


title: NumPy

text: The core functionality of NumPy is its "ndarray", for "n"-dimensional array, data structure. These arrays are strided views on memory. In contrast to Python's built-in list data structure, these arrays are homogeneously typed: all elements of a single array must be of the same type.


title: NumPy

text: Such arrays can also be views into memory buffers allocated by C/C++, Python, and Fortran extensions to the CPython interpreter without the need to copy data around, giving a degree of compatibility with existing numerical libraries. This functionality is exploited by the SciPy package, which wraps a number of such libraries (notably BLAS and LAPACK). NumPy has built-in support for memory-mapped ndarrays.


title: NumPy

text: Inserting or appending entries to an array is not as trivially possible as it is with Python's lists.


title: NumPy

text: The routine to extend arrays actually creates new arrays of the desired shape and padding values, copies the given array into the new one and returns it.


title: NumPy

text: NumPy's operation does not actually link the two arrays but returns a new one, filled with the entries from both given arrays in sequence.


title: NumPy

text: Reshaping the dimensionality of an array with is only possible as long as the number of elements in the array does not change.


title: NumPy

text: These circumstances originate from the fact that NumPy's arrays must be views on contiguous memory buffers. A replacement package called Blaze attempts to overcome this limitation.


title: NumPy

text: Algorithms that are not expressible as a vectorized operation will typically run slowly because they must be implemented in "pure Python", while vectorization may increase memory complexity of some operations from constant to linear, because temporary arrays must be created that are as large as the inputs. Runtime compilation of numerical code has been implemented by several groups to avoid these problems; open source solutions that interoperate with NumPy include numexpr and Numba. Cython and Pythran are static-compiling alternatives to these.


title: NumPy

text: Many modern large-scale scientific computing applications have requirements that exceed the capabilities of the NumPy arrays.


title: NumPy

text: For example, NumPy arrays are usually loaded into a computer's memory, which might have insufficient capacity for the analysis of large datasets.


title: NumPy

text: However, many linear algebra operations can be accelerated by executing them on clusters of CPUs or of specialized hardware, such as GPUs and TPUs, which many deep learning applications rely on.


title: NumPy

text: As a result, several alternative array implementations have arisen in the scientific python ecosystem over the recent years, such as Dask for distributed arrays and TensorFlow or JAX for computations on GPUs.


title: NumPy

text: Because of its popularity, these often implement a subset of Numpy's API or mimic it, so that users can change their array implementation with minimal changes to their code required. A recently introduced library named CuPy, accelerated by Nvidia's CUDA framework, has also shown potential for faster computing, being a 'drop-in replacement' of NumPy.


title: NumPy

text: »> b = np.linspace(0, 2, 4) # create an array with four equally spaced points starting with 0 and ending with 2.


title: NumPy

text: »> r = np.reshape(np.arange(256*256)%256,(256,256)) # 256x256 pixel array with a horizontal gradient from 0 to 255 for the red color channel


title: NumPy

text: »> g = np.zeros_like(r) # array of same size and type as r but filled with 0s for the green color channel


title: NumPy

text: »> cv2.imwrite('gradients.png', np.dstack([b,g,r])) # OpenCV images are interpreted as BGR, the depth-stacked array will be written to an 8bit RGB PNG-file called 'gradients.png'


title: NumPy

text: ... dist = sum([(dp-dq)**2 for dp,dq in zip(point,qPoint)])**0.5 # compute the euclidean distance for each point to q


title: NumPy

text: ... if dist < minDist or minDist < 0: # if necessary, update minimum distance and index of the corresponding point


title: NumPy

text: »> minIdx = np.argmin(np.linalg.norm(points-qPoint,axis=1)) # compute all euclidean distances at once and return the index of the smallest one


title: Eulipotyphla

text: Eulipotyphla (, which means "truly fat and blind") is an order of mammals suggested by molecular methods of phylogenetic reconstruction, which includes the laurasiatherian members of the now-invalid polyphyletic order Lipotyphla, but not the afrotherian members (tenrecs, golden moles, and otter shrews, now in their own order Afrosoricida).


title: Eulipotyphla

text: Eulipotyphla comprises the hedgehogs and gymnures (family Erinaceidae, formerly also the order Erinaceomorpha), solenodons (family Solenodontidae), the desmans, moles, and shrew-like moles (family Talpidae) and true shrews (family Soricidae). True shrews, talpids and solenodons were formerly grouped in Soricomorpha; however, Soricomorpha has been found to be paraphyletic, since erinaceids are the sister group of shrews, and they are more closely linked to the Carnivora order; (such as cats, dogs, bears, skunks, badgers, etc.).


title: Eulipotyphla

text: Family-level cladogram of modern eulipotyphlan relationships, following Roca et al. and Brace et al.:


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Wenceslaus I ( ; c. 907 – 28 September 935 or 929), Wenceslas I or "Václav the Good" was the Duke ("kníže") of Bohemia from 921 until his death, probably in 935. According to the legend, he was assassinated by his younger brother, Boleslaus the Cruel.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: His martyrdom and the popularity of several biographies gave rise to a reputation for heroic virtue that resulted in his sainthood. He was posthumously declared to be a king and patron saint of the Czech state. He is the subject of the well-known "Good King Wenceslas", a carol for Saint Stephen's Day.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Wenceslaus was the son of Vratislaus I, Duke of Bohemia from the Přemyslid dynasty. His grandfather, Bořivoj I of Bohemia, was converted to Christianity by Cyril and Methodius. His mother, Drahomíra, was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief of the Havelli, but was baptized at the time of her marriage. His paternal grandmother, Ludmila of Bohemia, saw to it that he was educated in the Old Slavonic language and, at an early age, Wenceslaus was sent to the college at Budeč.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: In 921, when Wenceslaus was about thirteen, his father died and his grandmother became regent. Jealous of the influence that Ludmila wielded over Wenceslaus, Drahomíra arranged to have her killed. Ludmila was at Tetín Castle near Beroun when assassins murdered her on 15 September 921. She is said to have been strangled by them with her veil. She was at first buried in the church of St. Michael at Tetín, but her remains were later removed, probably by Wenceslaus, to the church of St. George in Prague, which had been built by his father.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Drahomíra then assumed the role of regent and immediately initiated measures against Christians. When Wenceslaus was 18, those Christian nobles who remained rebelled against Drahomira. The uprising was successful, and Drahomira was sent into exile to Budeč.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: With the support of the nobles, Wenceslaus took control of the government. He "...reined in the dependent dukes who had become restive under the regency and used Christianity to strengthen his state."


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: After the fall of Great Moravia, the rulers of the Bohemian Duchy had to deal both with continuous raids by the Magyars and the forces of the Saxon and East Frankish king Henry the Fowler, who had started several eastern campaigns into the adjacent lands of the Polabian Slavs, homeland of Wenceslaus's mother. To withstand Saxon overlordship, Wenceslaus's father Vratislaus had forged an alliance with the Bavarian duke Arnulf, a fierce opponent of King Henry at that time. The alliance became worthless, however, when Arnulf and Henry reconciled at Regensburg in 921.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Early in 929, the joint forces of Duke Arnulf of Bavaria and King Henry I the Fowler reached Prague in a sudden attack that forced Wenceslaus to resume the payment of a tribute first imposed by the East Frankish king Arnulf of Carinthia in 895. Henry had been forced to pay a huge tribute to the Magyars in 926 and needed the Bohemian tribute, which Wenceslaus probably refused to pay after the reconciliation between Arnulf and Henry. Another possible reason for the attack was the formation of the anti-Saxon alliance between Bohemia, the Polabian Slavs, and the Magyars.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Wenceslaus introduced German priests into his realm and favoured the Latin rite instead of the old Slavic, which had gone into disuse in many places for want of priests. He also founded a rotunda consecrated to St. Vitus at Prague Castle in Prague that was the basis of present-day St. Vitus Cathedral.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: In September 935, a group of nobles allied with Wenceslaus's younger brother Boleslav plotted to kill him. After Boleslav invited Wenceslaus to a celebration of the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Stará Boleslav, three of Boleslav's companions (Tira, Česta, and Hněvsa) fell on the duke and stabbed him to death. As the duke fell, Boleslav ran him through with a lance.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: According to Cosmas of Prague, in his "Chronica Boëmorum" of the early 12th century, one of Boleslav's sons was born on the day of Wenceslaus's death. Because of the ominous circumstance of his birth, the infant was named Strachkvas, which means "a dreadful feast".


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: There is also a tradition that Wenceslaus's loyal servant Podevin avenged his death by killing one of the chief conspirators, an act for which he was executed by Boleslav.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: The assassination of Wenceslaus has been characterized as an important turning point in early Bohemian history, as the rule of Boleslav I saw him renounce the Franks, centralize power in Bohemia and expand the territory of the polity.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Wenceslaus was considered a martyr and saint immediately after his death, when a cult of Wenceslaus grew up in Bohemia and in England. Within a few decades, four biographies of him were in circulation. These hagiographies had a powerful influence on the High Middle Ages concept of the "rex justus" (righteous king), a monarch whose power stems mainly from his great piety as well as his princely vigor.


title: Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia

text: Referring approvingly to these hagiographies, the chronicler Cosmas of Prague, writing in about the year 1119, states: