NeuralEnsemble/elephant: Release 0.8.0

New features

• The parallel module is a new experimental module (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/307) to run python functions concurrently. Supports native (pythonic) ProcessPollExecutor and MPI. Not limited to Elephant functional.
• Added an optional refractory_period argument, set to None by default, to dither_spikes function (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/297).
• Added cdf and icdf functions in Kernel class to correctly estimate the median index, needed for instantaneous_rate function in statistics.py (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/313).
• Added an optional center_kernel argument, set to True by default (to behave as in Elephant <0.8.0 versions) to instantaneous_rate function in statistics.py (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/313).

• Analysis of Sequences of Synchronous EvenTs (ASSET) tutorial: https://elephant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/asset.html
• Parallel module tutorial: https://elephant.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/parallel.html

• Optimized ASSET runtime by a factor of 10 and more (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/259, https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/333).

Python 2.7 and 3.5 are deprecated and will not be maintained by the end of 2020. Switch to Python 3.6+.

• Naming convention changes (binsize -> bin_size, etc.) in almost all Elephant functions (https://github.com/NeuralEnsemble/elephant/pull/316).
• Deprecated pandas_bridge module has been removed from a list of auto imports in elephant/__init__.py but can be still easily accessed by from elephant import pandas_bridge.