A Note on Chambers’ Method

A correction is given for one of Chambers’ second-order iteration formulae. It is shown that composition of the secant method with itself exhibits a convergence exponent of 2.414, whereas composition of the iteration function with itself yields an exponent of 2.83

Growing Philanthropy through Giving Circles: Lessons Learned from Start-up to Grantmaking

Individual donors coming together to pool their funds and to make grants, that is the idea behind giving circles. Emerging as a new trend in the United States, giving circles are typically organized around a particular issue or area of interest and are considered a high engagement form of philanthropy. The circle's grantmaking functions, proposal review, and site visits engage members in a participatory process that, when combined with the increased impact of pooled charitable resources, has strong appeal to many donors. The Baltimore Giving Project, housed at the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers (USA), has supported the growth of many giving circles since 2000. Its report details the growth and lessons learned from two of these circles

La réforme des institutions centrales. Quelques jalons

« In this article the author envisages and studies the reform of the Senate, of the House of Commons and of the Supreme Court of Canada ; the function of the Governor General is also considered. A suggestion is made for introducing a system of mitigated proportional representation in the House of Commons, as proposed by the Pepin-Robarts report of January 1979. The authors analyses the advantages and disadvantages of an elected Senate, of a Senate whose members are appointed by the federal government or by the federal and provincial governments, of a second House which would constitute a House of the Provinces ; the author is aganist an equal representation of the provinces in the Senate. Professor Beaudoin favours a specialized constitutional Court of Canada, although he considers that such a reform is very unlikely to happen ; however, he adds that in any case, the Supreme Court is de facto a constitutional court to a certain extent. He recommends that the principle of dualism be more visible. Finally, the author describes how the function of Governor General has evolved since 1926, and outlines the role that the Governor General may play in normal and anormal times. 

Quelques propositions

The rules of procedure in the House, the powers of the Speaker, the vote of non-confidence, the proportionnai representation vote as well as the future of parliamentary government, are some of the questions the author deals with when expounding upon the reform of the House of Commons. More powers should be given to the Speaker, and there should be a system where sessions and votes are held on a more regular basis, even if the principle of responsible government is maintained. The proportionnai representation vote is not for the immediate future and the author wonders whether a presidential system as in France would be appropriate for Canada

La protection constitutionnelle des minorités

The author outlines areas covered by constitutional texts and in doing so points to various deficiencies. The first one is brought on by the override clause provided in Section 33 of the Charter which makes it possible to suspend certain rights and a second one is found in the fact that the Charter does not deal with social and economic rights, a deficiency which is most likely to be perceived by members of a minority. His observations lead him to conclude that the courts will have to assume an activist role in order to implement various rights

De-Essentializing the Past: Deconstructing Colonial Categories in 19th-Century Ontario

This study engages with both the archaeology of colonialism and historical archaeology in a manner that brings them into direct dialogue with each other to explore how essentialized identity tropes are used to frame our conceptualizations of the past. The archaeology of colonialism and historical archaeology have been conceptually bifurcated along a colonized/colonizer dichotomy and continuously reified by the insertion of research into one category or the other. The archaeology of colonialism generally focuses on the experiences of the colonized within the colonial process, while historical archaeology focuses on the experiences of Europeans and/or people of European descent. This is not to say that archaeologists working on either side of this conceptual divide ignore each other entirely, but rather their foci – and subsequent discussions – rarely converge. To create a conceptual bridge between these disparate dialogues, I explore multigenerational, 19th-century sites in southwestern Ontario, all of which have two sequential occupations that serve to explore generational shifts through time. The sites explored are conventionally bifurcated along colonial and capitalist binaries, and categorized as colonized (Davisville settlement and Mohawk Village, two Mohawk communities) and colonizer (McKinney and Odlum families, two Euro-Canadian families), as well as elite (Mohawk Village and Odlum) and non-elite (Davisville and McKinney). An exploration of the patterns between generations, contexts, and the bifurcated divides enabled insights into the differences and similarities between and within the conventional tropes of colonialism. Furthermore, this allows for a discussion of how archaeological taxonomic conventions shape and conceptualize our interpretations from the outset and fundamentally limit the narratives that we produce. This exploration emphasizes that our contemporary archaeological discourses are products of present day sensibilities, firmly embedded within the legacies of colonialism, and create archaeological imaginaries of the past that insidiously reify the essentialized colonial divide. Instead of emphasizing the differences between Euro-Canadian and Indigenous sites, exploring the contemporaneous commonalities of existence for all the sites under study illustrates archaeological dialogues that transcend the colonial conceptual divide and de-essentialize archaeological narratives of the past

Alien Registration- Beaudoin, Francois A. (Lewiston, Androscoggin County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/30442/thumbnail.jp

Streamlining Sound Speed Profile Pre-Processing: Case Studies and Field Trials

High rate sound speed profiling systems have the potential to maximize the efficiency of multibeam echosounder systems (MBES) by increasing the accuracy at the outer edges of the swath where refraction effects are at their worst. In some cases, high rate sampling on the order of tens of casts per hour is required to capture the spatio-temporal oceanographic variability and this increased sampling rate can challenge the data acquisition workflow if refraction corrections are to be applied in real-time. Common bottlenecks result from sound speed profile (SSP) preprocessing requirements, e.g. file format conversion, cast extension, reduction of the number of points in the cast, filtering, etc. Without the ability to quickly pre-process SSP data, the MBES operator can quickly become overwhelmed with SSP related tasks, potentially to the detriment of their other duties. A series of algorithms are proposed in which SSPs are automatically pre-processed to meet input criteria of MBES acquisition systems, specifically the problems of cast extrapolation and thinning are addressed. The algorithmic performance will be assessed in terms of sounding uncertainty through a series of case studies in a variety of oceanographic conditions and water depths. Results from a field trial in the French Mediterranean will be used to assess the improvement in real-time MBES acquisition workflow and survey accuracy and will also highlight where further improvements can be made in the pre-processing pipeline