IRAS 00183-7111: ALMA and X-ray view of an ultra luminous infrared galaxy

The aim of this Thesis work is to study the multi-frequency properties of the Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxy (ULIRG) IRAS 00183-7111 (I00183) at z = 0.327, connecting ALMA sub-mm/mm observations with those at high energies in order to place constraints on the properties of its central power source and verify whether the gas traced by the CO may be responsible for the obscuration observed in X-rays. I00183 was selected from the so-called Spoon diagnostic diagram (Spoon et al. 2007) for mid-infrared spectra of infrared galaxies based on the equivalent width of the 6.2 μm Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) emission feature versus the 9.7 μm silicate strength. Such features are a powerful tool to investigate the contribution of star formation and AGN activity in this class of objects. I00183 was selected from the top-left region of the plot where the most obscured sources, characterized by a strong Si absorption feature, are located. To link the sub-mm/mm to the X-ray properties of I00183, ALMA archival Cycle 0 data in Band 3 (87 GHz) and Band 6 (270 GHz) have been calibrated and analyzed, using CASA software. ALMA Cycle 0 was the Early Science program for which data reprocessing is strongly suggested. The main work of this Thesis consisted in reprocessing raw data to provide an improvement with respect to the available archival products and results, which were obtained using standard procedures. The high-energy data consists of Chandra, XMM-Newton and NuSTAR observations which provide a broad coverage of the spectrum in the energy range 0.5 − 30 keV. Chandra and XMM archival data were used, with an exposure time of 22 and 22.2 ks, respectively; their reduction was carried out using CIAO and SAS software. The 100 ks NuSTAR are still private and the spectra were obtained by courtesy of the PI (K. Iwasawa). A detailed spectral analysis was done using XSPEC software; the spectral shape was reproduced starting from simple phenomenological models, and then more physical models were introduced to account for the complex mechanisms that involve this source. In Chapter 1, an overview of the scientific background is discussed, with a focus on the target, I00183, and the Spoon diagnostic diagram, from which it was originally selected. In Chapter 2, the basic principles of interferometry are briefly introduced, with a description of the calibration theory applied to interferometric observations. In Chapter 3, ALMA and its capabilities, both current and future, are shown, explaining also the complex structure of the ALMA archive. In Chapter 4, the calibration of ALMA data is presented and discussed, showing also the obtained imaging products. In Chapter 5, the analysis and discussion of the main results obtained from ALMA data is presented. In Chapter 6, the X-ray observations, data reduction and spectral analysis are reported, with a brief introduction to the basic principle of X-ray astronomy and the instruments from which the observations were carried out. Finally, the overall work is summarized, with particular emphasis on the main obtained results and the possible future perspectives.

The framework of the virtual laser tracker - A systematic approach to the assessment of error sources and uncertainty in laser tracker measurement

Laser trackers have been widely used in many industries to meet increasingly high accuracy requirements. In laser tracker measurement, it is complex and difficult to perform an accurate error analysis and uncertainty evaluation. This paper firstly reviews the working principle of single beam laser trackers and state-of- The- Art of key technologies from both industrial and academic efforts, followed by a comprehensive analysis of uncertainty sources. A generic laser tracker modelling method is formulated and the framework of the virtual tracker is proposed. The VLS can be used for measurement planning, measurement accuracy optimization and uncertainty evaluation. The completed virtual laser tracking system should take all the uncertainty sources affecting coordinate measurement into consideration and establish an uncertainty model which will behave in an identical way to the real system. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010.

The Politics of Gender Socialization

This manuscript is comprised of three papers that examine the far-reaching and often invisible political outcomes of gender role socialization in the United States. These papers focus primarily on two areas: political confidence amongst girls and women, and the effects of gender on survey measurement and data quality.

Chapter one focuses on political confidence, and the likelihood that women will run for political office. Women continue to be underrepresented at all levels of political leadership, and their lack of political ambition, relative to men, has been identified as a primary cause. In this paper, I explore the relationship between an individual's masculinity and femininity and her development of political ambition. Using original survey data from the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), I first empirically demonstrate that gender (masculinity/femininity) and sex (male/female) are unique elements of identity and, moreover, are both independently related to political ambition. I then explore the relevance of gender for the study of candidate emergence, testing whether and how masculinity and femininity might be related to political ambition are supported empirically. While the results suggest that masculinity is positively associated with the development of political ambition, the relationship between femininity and candidate emergence seems to be more complicated and not what prevailing stereotypes might lead us to expect. Moreover, while the relationship between masculinity and political ambition is the same for men and women, the relationship between femininity and political ambition is very different for women than it is for men. This study suggests that gender role socialization is highly related with both men's and women's desire to seek positions of political leadership.

Chapter two continues this exploration of gendered differences in the development of political ambition, this time exploring how social attractiveness and gendered perceptions of political leadership impact the desire to hold political office.Women are persistently underrepresented as candidates for public office and remain underrepresented at all levels of government in the United States. Previous literature suggests that the gendered ambition gap, gender socialization, insufficient recruitment, media scrutiny, family responsibilities, modern campaign strategies, and political opportunity structures all contribute to the gender imbalance in pools of officeholders and candidates. To explain women's reticence to run, scholars have offered explanations addressing structural, institutional, and individual-level factors that deter women from becoming candidates, especially for high positions in the U.S. government. This paper examines a previously unexplored factor: how dating and socialized norms of sexual attraction affect political ambition. This study investigates whether young, single, and heterosexual women's desire for male attention and fear of being perceived as unattractive or "too ambitious" present obstacles to running for office. The results of these experiments suggest that social expectations about gender, attraction and sexuality, and political office-holding may contribute to women's reticence to pursue political leadership. Chapter two is a co-authored work and represents the joint efforts of Laura Lazarus Frankel, Shauna Shames, and Nadia Farjood.

Chapter 3 bridges survey methodology and gender socialization, focusing on how interviewer sex affects survey measurement and data quality. Specifically, this paper examines whether and how matching interviewer and respondent sex affects panel attrition--respondents dropping out of the study after participating in the first wave. While the majority of research on interviewer effects suggests that matching interviewer and respondent characteristics (homophily) yields higher quality data, little work has examined whether this pattern holds true in the area of panel attrition. Using paradata from the General Social Survey (GSS), I explore this question. My analysis reveals that, despite its broader positive effects on data quality, matching interviewer and respondent sex increases likelihood to attrit. Interestingly, this phenomenon only emerges amongst male respondents. However, while assigning female interviewers to male respondents decreases their propensity to attrit, it also increases the likelihood of biased responses on gender related items. These conflicting outcomes represent a tradeoff for scholars and survey researchers, requiring careful consideration of mode, content, and study goals when designing surveys and/or analyzing survey data. The implications of these patterns and areas for further research are discussed.

Together, these papers illustrate two ways that gender norms are related to political outcomes: they contribute to patterns of candidate emergence and affect the measurement of political attitudes and behaviors.

Spaces of Order: An African Poetics of Space

“Spaces of Order” argues that the African novel should be studied as a revolutionary form characterized by aesthetic innovations that are not comprehensible in terms of the novel’s European archive of forms. It does this by mapping an African spatial order that undermines the spatial problematic at the formal and ideological core of the novel—the split between a private, subjective interior, and an abstract, impersonal outside. The project opens with an examination of spatial fragmentation as figured in the “endless forest” of Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard (1952). The second chapter studies Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) as a fictional world built around a peculiar category of space, the “evil forest,” which constitutes an African principle of order and modality of power. Chapter three returns to Tutuola via Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) and shows how the dispersal of fragmentary spaces of exclusion and terror within the colonial African city helps us conceive of political imaginaries outside the nation and other forms of liberal political communities. The fourth chapter shows Nnedi Okorafor—in her 2014 science-fiction novel Lagoon—rewriting Things Fall Apart as an alien-encounter narrative in which Africa is center-stage of a planetary, multi-species drama. Spaces of Order is a study of the African novel as a new logic of world making altogether.

Nonholonomically Constrained Dynamics and Optimization of Rolling Isolation Systems

Rolling Isolation Systems provide a simple and effective means for protecting components from horizontal floor vibrations. In these systems a platform rolls on four steel balls which, in turn, rest within shallow bowls. The trajectories of the balls is uniquely determined by the horizontal and rotational velocity components of the rolling platform, and thus provides nonholonomic constraints. In general, the bowls are not parabolic, so the potential energy function of this system is not quadratic. This thesis presents the application of Gauss's Principle of Least Constraint to the modeling of rolling isolation platforms. The equations of motion are described in terms of a redundant set of constrained coordinates. Coordinate accelerations are uniquely determined at any point in time via Gauss's Principle by solving a linearly constrained quadratic minimization. In the absence of any modeled damping, the equations of motion conserve energy. This mathematical model is then used to find the bowl profile that minimizes response acceleration subject to displacement constraint.

Design, fabrication and characterization of resonant waveguide grating based optical biosensors

The absence of rapid, low cost and highly sensitive biodetection platform has hindered the implementation of next generation cheap and early stage clinical or home based point-of-care diagnostics. Label-free optical biosensing with high sensitivity, throughput, compactness, and low cost, plays an important role to resolve these diagnostic challenges and pushes the detection limit down to single molecule. Optical nanostructures, specifically the resonant waveguide grating (RWG) and nano-ribbon cavity based biodetection are promising in this context. The main element of this dissertation is design, fabrication and characterization of RWG sensors for different spectral regions (e.g. visible, near infrared) for use in label-free optical biosensing and also to explore different RWG parameters to maximize sensitivity and increase detection accuracy. Design and fabrication of the waveguide embedded resonant nano-cavity are also studied. Multi-parametric analyses were done using customized optical simulator to understand the operational principle of these sensors and more important the relationship between the physical design parameters and sensor sensitivities. Silicon nitride (SixNy) is a useful waveguide material because of its wide transparency across the whole infrared, visible and part of UV spectrum, and comparatively higher refractive index than glass substrate. SixNy based RWGs on glass substrate are designed and fabricated applying both electron beam lithography and low cost nano-imprint lithography techniques. A Chromium hard mask aided nano-fabrication technique is developed for making very high aspect ratio optical nano-structure on glass substrate. An aspect ratio of 10 for very narrow (~60 nm wide) grating lines is achieved which is the highest presented so far. The fabricated RWG sensors are characterized for both bulk (183.3 nm/RIU) and surface sensitivity (0.21nm/nm-layer), and then used for successful detection of Immunoglobulin-G (IgG) antibodies and antigen (~1μg/ml) both in buffer and serum. Widely used optical biosensors like surface plasmon resonance and optical microcavities are limited in the separation of bulk response from the surface binding events which is crucial for ultralow biosensing application with thermal or other perturbations. A RWG based dual resonance approach is proposed and verified by controlled experiments for separating the response of bulk and surface sensitivity. The dual resonance approach gives sensitivity ratio of 9.4 whereas the competitive polarization based approach can offer only 2.5. The improved performance of the dual resonance approach would help reducing probability of false reading in precise bio-assay experiments where thermal variations are probable like portable diagnostics.

Identity, Purpose, and Well-Being Among Emerging Adult Hispanic Women

Few studies apply the Eriksonian model of identity formation to cross-cultural samples (3), even though issues of ethnicity and culture may inform a Hispanic woman’s self-concept (Phinney, 1996). Hispanic women may also be influenced by traditional gender role behaviors such as passivity or dependence that are outlined by marianismo (Stevens, 1973). A recent study of a multiethnic sample of emerging adult women and men found that purpose commitment mediated the effects of identity commitment on hope and life satisfaction (Burrow & Hill, 2011). The current research consists of two studies that replicate and expand upon the work of Burrow and Hill (2011). Study I replicated the work of Burrow and Hill (2011) among a sample of emerging adult Hispanic women, in order to assess the extent to which the original findings would replicate in a culturally distinct sample. Study II examined the role of marianismo, ethnic identity, and acculturation on identity commitment among emerging adult Hispanic women. Both studies utilized a sample of 532 female undergraduate psychology students, age 18 to 25, who self-identified as Hispanic and submitted data via online surveys. Both studies used self-report, quantitative data, which was analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results from Study I indicated good model fit and replicated the findings from Burrow and Hill (2011). Specifically, the direct effect of identity commitment on hope was fully contingent upon an individual’s level of purpose commitment, while the effect of identity commitment on life satisfaction was not contingent upon an individual’s level of purpose commitment. Results from Study II indicated that marianismo, Spanish proficiency, familiarity with Latino culture, and familiarity with American culture demonstrated statistically significant direct effects on identity commitment among emerging adult Hispanic women. Results indicated cultural convergence regarding the association of an individual’s identity with well-being through a sense of purpose. Findings also revealed the role of cultural factors in the extent to which Hispanic women commit to a personal identity. Future studies should employ mixed method research designs as a means to better ascertain implications of findings.

On the Threshold of Paradise and Present: Memory in Contemporary Cuban – American Literature

The exile leaving his or her homeland for new and unknown territory travels with much more than just luggage and the clothes on his or her back. He or she carries a weighty collection of memories. Available for the exile in times when the harmony of the past is far removed from the difficult circumstances present during the process of cultural assimilation, these memories present an opportunity for the exile to fashion for him or herself an identity that mimics the realities of life in the home left behind. In this creative endeavor, I seek to examine the powerful potential of memory as it is exercised by a collection of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in different corners of the United States. Analyzing Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, Ana Menéndez’s In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Elías Miguel Muñoz’s Brand New Memory, I aim to trace the suggestive potential of memory as it is used by each of the characters in these works in an effort to reconcile their Cuban identities with the ones that are in the process of creation in the U.S. I will borrow from a collection of literature dealing with identity and exile, relevant graduate-level theses on Cuban-American literature, as well as theoretical perspectives on memory formation and nostalgia in order to trace the various ways in which memory is relied on in the process of cultural assimilation and emotional coping. Being presented in Miami, which hosts the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants, this thesis aims to present itself as a reflective tool for Cubans and Cuban-Americans who may find value in seeing their personal sentiments portrayed in literature, thus allowing for a potential reevaluation of identity. If the existing literature on my topic of analysis reveals anything, it is that the scope of my project is one that has not been inspected previously, thus making my analytical contribution a new one that will add a new interpretive set of lens through which readers of contemporary Cuban-American literature can examine the works.

On the Threshold of Paradise and Present: Memory in Contemporary Cuban‐American Literature

The exile leaving his or her homeland for new and unknown territory travels with much more than just luggage and the clothes on his or her back. He or she carries a weighty collection of memories. Available for the exile in times when the harmony of the past is far removed from the difficult circumstances present during the process of cultural assimilation, these memories present an opportunity for the exile to fashion for him or herself an identity that mimics the realities of life in the home left behind. In this creative endeavor, I seek to examine the powerful potential of memory as it is exercised by a collection of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in different corners of the United States. Analyzing Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, Ana Menéndez’s In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Elías Miguel Muñoz’s Brand New Memory, I aim to trace the suggestive potential of memory as it is used by each of the characters in these works in an effort to reconcile their Cuban identities with the ones that are in the process of creation in the U.S. I will borrow from a collection of literature dealing with identity and exile, relevant graduate-level theses on Cuban-American literature, as well as theoretical perspectives on memory formation and nostalgia in order to trace the various ways in which memory is relied on in the process of cultural assimilation and emotional coping. Being presented in Miami, which hosts the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants, this thesis aims to present itself as a reflective tool for Cubans and Cuban-Americans who may find value in seeing their personal sentiments portrayed in literature, thus allowing for a potential reevaluation of identity. If the existing literature on my topic of analysis reveals anything, it is that the scope of my project is one that has not been inspected previously, thus making my analytical contribution a new one that will add a new interpretive set of lens through which readers of contemporary Cuban-American literature can examine the works.

Masculinities and Narrating the Past: Experiences of Researching White men who Refused to Serve in the Apartheid Army

This article reflexively analyses the construction of identity and the representation of the past in qualitative interviews with white men who refused to serve in the apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF). The contribution that white male objectors made to the anti-apartheid struggle occupies an ambivalent and increasingly forgotten aspect of South African liberation history. In a reflexive research story, I argue that the gendered, sexual and raced subjectivities of the researcher and researched are central to the joint construction of meaning in the interview and in the creation of self-narratives. The article also analyses how the narratives of white men's involvement in resisting apartheid are defined by their perceived position and wider power struggles in contemporary South Africa.

Autonomy-Oriented Social Movements and the Politics of Affect

Abstract This dissertation explores damaging tendencies that exist within autonomy-oriented activism in the West. I examine how affect shapes the way that internal conflict is approached and internal strife is dealt with in radical communities. I adopt Sara Ahmed’s proposition “that our emotions are bound up with the securing of the social hierarchy” (Ahmed, 2004b: 4) and given that autonomy-oriented practices are committed to dismantling existing hierarchies, it follows that the less oppressive social configurations sought by autonomous social movements must have different emotional underpinnings. My thesis involves applying critical theory on affect and emotion in social movements to interview data gathered from activists both currently and historically involved in autonomy-oriented social movement communities in Kingston, Ontario. I ask whether anglophone, western-based, autonomy-oriented social movements reproduced understandings of affect/emotions/feelings that underwrite the social order they are working against? I also ask, “how are our emotions conditioned by capitalism?”. The research that I engage with provides responses to these questions by pointing out how the dominant discourse on emotions in the West encourages and informs certain modes of identity production that affect the diminishing and sad practices of autonomy-oriented communities and the (re)production of oppressive practices found in the dominant order. My work critically places this psychologizing view of emotions, and its damaging effects on resistance, within the context of neoliberal capitalism. I argue that the way we understand the politics of affect is an important dimension of radical struggle, and will inform and impact upon our individual and collective capacities to respond to, and refuse to reproduce relations of control and domination. I look for an understanding of “why” and to “what extent” these determinations exists, and look for hope in a politics of affect which supports an autonomy-oriented ethic.

Financial media, globalisation, and China’s economic integration: comparing narrative construction of the Economist and Caijing

In June 2015, legal frameworks of the Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank were signed by its 57 founding members. Proposed and initiated by China, this multilateral development bank is considered to be an Asian counterpart to break the monopoly of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In October 2015, China’s Central Bank announced a benchmark interest rate cut to combat the economic slowdown. The easing policy coincides with the European Central Bank’s announcement of doubts over US Fed’s commitment to raise interest rates. Global stock markets responded positively to China’s move, with the exception of the indexes from Wall Street (Bland, 2015; Elliott, 2015). In the meantime, China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (or New Silk Road Economic Belt) became atopic of discourse in relation to its growing global economy, as China pledged $40 billion to trade and infrastructure projects (Bermingham, 2015). The foreign policy aims to reinforce the economic belt from western China through Central Asia towards Europe, as well as to construct maritime trading routes from coastal China through the South China Sea (Summers, 2015). In 2012, The Economist launched a new China section, to reveal the complexity of the‘meteoric rise’ of China. John Micklethwait, who was then the chief editor of the magazine, said that China’s emergence as a global power justified giving it a section of its own(Roush, 2012). In July 2015, Hu Shuli, the former chief editor of Caijing, announced the launch of a think tank and financial data service division called Caixin Insight Group, which encompasses the new Caixin China Purchasing Managers Index (PMI). Incooperation with with Markit Group, a principal global provider of PMI, the index soon became a widely cited economic indicator. One anecdote from November’s Caixin shows how much has changed: in a high-profile dialogue between Hu Shuli and Kevin Rudd, Hu insisted on asking questions in English; interestingly, the former Prime Minister of Australia insisted on replying in Chinese. These recent developments point to one thing: the economic ascent of China and its increasing influence on the power play between economics and politics in world markets. China has begun to take a more active role in rule making and enforcement under neoliberal frameworks. However, due to the country’s size and the scale of its economy in comparison to other countries, China’s version of globalisation has unique characteristics. The ‘Capitalist-socialist’ paradox is vital to China’s market-oriented transformation. In order to comprehend how such unique features are articulated and understood, there are several questions worth investigating in the realms of media and communication studies,such as how China’s neoliberal restructuring is portrayed and perceived by different types of interested parties, and how these portrayals are de-contextualised and re-contextualised in global or Anglo-American narratives. Therefore, based on a combination of the themes of globalisation, financial media and China’s economic integration, this thesis attempts to explore how financial media construct the narratives of China’s economic globalisation through the deployment of comparative and multi-disciplinary approaches. Two outstanding elite financial magazines, Britain’s The Economist, which has a global readership and influence, and Caijing, China’s leading financial magazine, are chosen as case studies to exemplify differing media discourses, representing, respectively, Anglo-American and Chinese socio-economic and political backgrounds, as well as their own journalistic cultures. This thesis tries to answer the questions of how and why China’s neoliberal restructuring is constructed from a globally-oriented perspective. The construction primarily involves people who are influential in business and policymaking. Hence, the analysis falls into the paradigm of elite-elite communication, which is an important but relatively less developed perspective in studying China and its globalisation. The comparing of characteristics of narrative construction are the result of the textual analysis of articles published over a ten-year period (mid-1998 to mid-2008). The corpus of samples come from the two media outlets’ coverage of three selected events:China becoming a member of the World Trade Organization, its outward direct investment, and the listing of stocks of Chinese companies in overseas exchanges, which are mutually exclusive in sample collection and collectively exhaustive in the inclusion of articles regarding China’s economic globalisation. The findings help to understand that, despite language, socio-economic and political differences, elite financial media with globally-oriented readerships share similar methods of and approaches to agenda setting, the evaluation of news prominence, the selection of frame, and the advocacy of deeply rooted neoliberal ideas. The comparison of their distinctive features reflects the different phases of building up the sense of identity in their readers as global elites, as well as the different economic interests that are aligned with the corresponding readerships. However, textual analysis is only relevant in terms of exploring how the narratives are constructed and the elements they include; textual analysis alone prevents us from seeing the obstacles and the constrains of the journalistic practices of construction. Therefore, this thesis provides a brief discussion of interviews with practitioners from the two media, in order to understand how similar or different narratives are manifested and perceived, how the concept of neoliberalism deviates from and is justified in the Chinese context, and how and for what purpose deviations arise from Western to Chinese contexts. The thesis also contributes to defining financial media in the domain of elite communication. The relevant and closely interlocking concepts of globalisation, elitism and neoliberalism are discussed, and are used as a theoretical bedrock in the analysis of texts and contexts. It is important to address the agenda-setting and ideological role of elite financial media, because of its narrative formula of infusing business facts with opinions,which is important in constructing the global elite identity as well as influencing neoliberal policy-making. On the other hand, ‘journalistic professionalism’ has been redefined, in that the elite identity is shared by the content producer, reader and the actors in the news stories emerging from the much-compressed news cycle. The professionalism of elite financial media requires a dual definition, that of being professional in the understanding of business facts and statistics, and that of being professional in the making sense of stories by deploying economic logic.

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

Narrative Deliberation? On Storytelling as a Necessary Component of Public Deliberation

This paper deals with the place of narrative, that is, storytelling, in public deliberation. A distinction is made between weak and strong conceptions of narrative. According to the weak one, storytelling is but one rhetorical device among others with which social actors produce and convey meaning. In contrast, the strong conception holds that narrative is necessary to communicate, and argue, about topics such as the human experience of time, collective identities and the moral and ethical validity of values. The upshot of this idea is that storytelling should be a necessary component of any ideal of public deliberation. Contrary to recent work by deliberative theorists, who tend to adopt the weak conception of narrative, the author argues for embracing the strong one. The main contention of this article is that stories not only have a legitimate place in deliberation, but are even necessary to formulate certain arguments in the fi rst place; for instance, arguments drawing on historical experience. This claim, namely that narrative is constitutive of certain arguments, in the sense that, without it, said reasons cannot be articulated, is illustrated by deliberative theory’s own narrative underpinnings. Finally, certain possible objections against the strong conception of narrative are dispelled.

‘Abuse of Rights’ in Belgian and French Patent Law – A Case Law Analysis

This paper examines what types of actions undertaken by patent holders have been considered as abusive in the framework of French and Belgian patent litigation. Particular attention is given to the principle of the prohibition of “abuse of rights” (AoR). In the jurisdictions under scrutiny, the principle of AoR is essentially a jurisprudential construction in cases where judges faced a particular set of circumstances for which no codified rules were available. To investigate how judges deal with the prohibition of AoR in patent litigation and taking into account the jurisprudential nature of the principle, an in-depth and comparative case law analysis has been conducted. Although the number of cases in which patent holders have been sanctioned for such abuses is not overabundant, they do provide sufficient leads on what is understood by Belgian and French courts to constitute an abuse of patent rights. From this comparative analysis, useful lessons can be learned for the interpretation of the ambiguous notion of ‘abuse’ from a broader perspective.