Nudging or Fudging: The World Development Report 2015

The 2015 World Development Report, Mind Society and Behaviour (World Bank, 2015), seeks a redesign of development policy on the basis of insights emerging from behavioural economics. This paper offers a critical assessment of the Report across four dimensions. First, it situates the Report within the broader and evolving knowledge role of the Bank. Second, the paper locates the Report in the context of the evolution of economics as a discipline and how this informs the evolution of the Bank’s development economics. Third, the Report is critically assessed for its narrow take on behavioural economics itself. Finally, the practical significance of the promotion of behavioural economics is considered through reference to its use in interventions in health in general and in response to HIV/AIDS in particular. It is argued that the Report suggests a dramatic and flawed reduction of what development is about, in that it foregoes any analysis of the structural problems facing developing countries and fails to propose major reforms to tackle these

Harbouring nature: port development and dynamic birds provide clues for conservation

During the twentieth century, many coastal areas in Europe changed dramatically due to coastal protection works, human expansion drift and booming beach tourism. As a result the natural area of suitable nesting habitat of many coastal birds has decreased enormously and a large number of species are now listed as threatened. Some species were able to exploit new opportunities offered by human activities, but most coastal birds are now confined to islands, protected areas or artificial sites (nature development projects, restored coastal habitats and even floating rafts). Protection of local resources, as well as further development and management of breeding sites is considered vital in maintaining the populations of threatened coastal breeders. The rationale behind nature restoration and development is often solely based on offering suitable habitat to the birds, while its success is mainly judged from the evolution in the number of birds present. As more and more information becomes available on the reproductive performance of coastal birds, it becomes clear that in some protected areas long-term reproductive success is below self-sustaining levels. Apparently humans are able to create artificial nesting habitats that are highly attractive from the birds’ perspective but are in fact pitfalls for the population in the long term. In contrast, the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, is an excellent example of an artificial nesting habitat of high quality in terms of attraction as well as reproduction. Here, vast sandy areas were raised in a former marine habitat in the 1980s. The works mimicked natural dynamic processes and coastal breeding birds instantly reacted. Within 20 years, the area has developed from open sea to a breeding site of major international importance. Peak population figures by far exceed the 1% of the total biogeographical population. At present, Zeebrugge harbours more than 4% of the total north-west European Common Tern population, thus making it the largest colony in Europe. It is a highly productive population and acts as a major source of recruits for the biogeographical population as a whole. Until recently, the success of the bird populations was based on the ongoing creation of suitable nesting habitats and management measures, like removal of the vegetation and covering areas with shell fragments. Further development of the harbour, the arrival of the fox and competition for nesting habitat with large gulls are major threats for the bird population. Therefore part of the colony was allocated to a peninsula and further steps are now being considered to preserve this valuable population. Apparently feeding conditions are very good and the harbour itself and its direct surroundings function as a major source of small prey fish of which the availability is facilitated by the heavy shipping traffic and the sheltered conditions of the feeding areas

Seabirds in Belgian marine waters: implications for policy and management (poster)

In 1992, the Institute of Nature Conservation (INC) started ship-based surveys on the Belgian Continental Shelf (BCS) to study the spatial and temporal distribution of seabirds. Among other things, the study showed that the Belgian marine waters hold internationally important numbers (> 1% of the biogeographical populations) of several coastal and marine bird species. Also the area proved to be of major importance for several species of migratory birds. Out of the 121 bird species encountered at sea during the period 1992-98, 23 were selected as being true marine species that occur in relatively high densities within the Belgian waters. Of these 23 species six were so-called ‘focal species’, being seabirds which are included in the highest priority lists of international conservation instruments (EC-Birds Directive, Bern Convention or Bonn Convention) and which attain at least 1% of the flyway population in Belgian marine waters in a particular season. Based on the distribution patterns, conservation value, and sensitivity for disturbance or oil pollution of the six focal seabirds several areas of high ornithological importance as well as areas sensitive for disturbance or pollution could be distinguished at the BCS. The avian hotspots at the Westkustbanken and Vlaamse Banken turned out to be the most sensitive areas for disturbance and oil pollution throughout the year, while the sensitivity of other areas varies with the seasons

Beach bird surveys in Belgium (poster)

Oil contamination is still a major cause of mortality in many coastal and seabird species around Europe. In a comparison with other North Sea areas, oil rates of most Belgian beached bird species are significantly higher than in northern areas such as the Shetlands and Norway, and more or less in line with oil rates at other European continental coasts. Wrecks of starved unoiled guillemots (and other species) became an almost annual event at the North Sea coasts from the first half of the ‘80s onwards, also in Belgium.Oil rates of beached bird corpses are an appropriate condition indicator of oil pollution at sea. Oil rate of most bird species/taxa in Belgium indicate a decline in oil pollution for the period 1962-99, though only Laridae, guillemot and razorbill show significant reductions. For the other taxa no significant decrease in proportion of oiled birds could be demonstrated, often due to the relatively small study area and hence insufficient number of birds collected. Assuming that a sample of at least ten complete corpses is required to calculate reliable oil rates, only the guillemot (as species) and auks (as taxon) can provide the necessary data in Belgium these days.Long-term oil pollution monitoring in Belgium should be continued with a major focus on a set of abundant bird taxa, sensitive to oil pollution and occurring in various marine habitats and the collection of additional data during the rest of the winter. Most appropriate for this set of limited bird taxa to focus on are grebes (inshore), Laridae, guillemot and razorbill (midshore) and kittiwake and fulmar (offshore).Birds dying at sea may eventually wash ashore. As such, beached bird surveys can be an important source of information concerning mortality of seabirds in the marine environment. However, there has been a lot of debate on the question how numbers of casualties on beaches relate to the actual mortality at sea and which factors affect this relationship. The temporal patterns of beached birds usually follow those of seabirds at sea with a time lag of at least one month. Considering the short Belgian shoreline and the prevailing frequency distribution of winds, probably only 10% of all birds washing ashore died in Belgian marine waters. With a dominant SSW circulation and a net residual current in northeastern direction, many birds must end up on Dutch, German or Scandinavian beaches. Accordingly, there is a higher probability that Belgian beaches receive birds that died in northern France or south England than from other North Sea border states. Based on the number of birds found on the beach and brought in at the MEC, and taking into account that 50-80 % of the corpses have disappeared already within the first 9 days (the mean interval between succeeding weekly surveys), we estimate that the total number of bird corpses beaching on the Belgian coast each winter might be as high as 5,000-10,000 birds

Direct excitation of propagating spin waves by focused ultrashort optical pulses

An all-optical experiment long utilized to image phonons excited by ultrashort optical pulses has been applied to a magnetic sample. In addition to circular ripples due to surface acoustic waves, we observe an X-shaped pattern formed by propagating spin waves. The emission of spin waves from the optical pulse epicenter in the form of collimated beams is qualitatively reproduced by micromagnetic simulations. We explain the observed pattern in terms of the group velocity distribution of Damon-Eshbach magnetostatic spin waves in the reciprocal space and the wave vector spectrum of the focused ultrafast laser pulse

Magnetization structure of a Bloch point singularity

Switching of magnetic vortex cores involves a topological transition characterized by the presence of a magnetization singularity, a point where the magnetization vanishes (Bloch point). We analytically derive the shape of the Bloch point that is an extremum of the free energy with exchange, dipole and the Landau terms for the determination of the local value of the magnetization modulus.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Chiral symmetry breaking of magnetic vortices by sample roughness

Finite-element micromagnetic simulations are employed to study the chiral symmetry breaking of magnetic vortices, caused by the surface roughness of thin-film magnetic structures. An asymmetry between vortices with different core polarizations has been experimentally observed for square-shaped platelets. E.g., the threshold fields for vortex core switching were found to differ for core up and down. This asymmetry was however not expected for these symmetrically-shaped structures, where both core polarizations should behave symmetrically. Three-dimensional finite element simulations are employed to show that a small surface roughness can break the symmetry between vortex cores pointing up and down. A relatively small sample roughness is found sufficient to reproduce the experimentally observed asymmetries. It arises from the lack of mirror-symmetry of the rough thin-film structures, which causes vortices with different handedness to exhibit asymmetric dynamics