Vacancy diffusion in the Cu(001) surface II: Random walk theory

We develop a version of the vacancy mediated tracer diffusion model, which follows the properties of the physical system of In atoms diffusing within the top layer of Cu(001) terraces. This model differs from the classical tracer diffusion problem in that (i) the lattice is finite, (ii) the boundary is a trap for the vacancy, and (iii) the diffusion rate of the vacancy is different, in our case strongly enhanced, in the neighborhood of the tracer atom. A simple continuum solution is formulated for this problem, which together with the numerical solution of the discrete model compares well with our experimental results.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

Bistability in the Shape Transition of Strained Islands

The equilibrium shape of a monatomic strained island on a substrate depends on the step free energies and the difference in surface stress between the island and the substrate. For small island sizes the step free energies dominate, resulting in compact islands. Beyond a critical island size, however, the strain energy becomes dominant and the island maximizes its perimeter, resulting in elongated islands. Here we show that for strained islands with force monopoles pointing in opposing directions at neighboring steps, a regime exists near the critical island size where both compact and elongated shapes can coexist

De autonijverheid in België

This paper provides an extensive overview of the economic importance and evolution of the car manufacturing industry. In addition, it provides evidence that the car industry is still playing a vital role in process innovation. The currently widespread lean production method, under which companies focus on their core activities and develop a network of subcontractors, in fact originates from the Japanese car industry. The introduction of the "lean production" concept in Europe had a far-reaching impact on corporate relations. Important responsibilities - such as product development, quality control, innovation efforts and timely deliveries - have been/are passed on to the subcontractors. Company clusters have been formed, which often also have consequences in terms of geographical location due to the necessity of "just-in-time" or even "just-in-sequence"-deliveries. The mere fact that global companies have implemented this production method, also adds to the internationalization of the subcontracting companies. The latter conclusion fuelled/fuels the trend to anchor as it were the industrial core activities through an appropriate policy. Such a policy must be based upon reliable statistical observations. A major disadvantage, however, is that because of their network structure, the corporate clusters' importance is hard to measure. Since the input-output tables are not available for the very latest years, on the one hand, and are not sufficiently detailed, on the other hand, a method has been searched for which allows to gauge the importance of a specific branch. In this paper the method will be applied to the car manufacturing in Belgium. The proposed calculation method is based on the supply and use tables drawn up by the Bank within the framework of the National Accounts Institute.branch survey, car industry, subcontracting, indirect effects

ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF THE BELGIAN PORTS: Flemish maritime ports, Liège port complex and the port of Brussels – Report 2014. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 299

This paper is an annual publication issued by the Microeconomic Analysis service of the National Bank of Belgium. The Flemish maritime ports (Antwerp, Ghent, Ostend, Zeebrugge), the Autonomous Port of Liège and the port of Brussels play a major role in their respective regional economies and in the Belgian economy, not only in terms of industrial activity but also as intermodal centers facilitating the commodity flow. This update paper1 provides an extensive overview of the economic importance and development of the Flemish maritime ports, the Liège port complex and the port of Brussels for the period 2009 - 2014, with an emphasis on 2014. Focusing on the three major variables of value added, employment and investment, the report also provides some information based on the social balance sheet and an overview of the financial situation in these ports as a whole. These observations are linked to a more general context, along with a few cargo statistics. Annual accounts data from the Central Balance Sheet Office were used for the calculation of direct effects, the study of financial ratios and the analysis of the social balance sheet. The indirect effects of the activities concerned were estimated in terms of value added and employment, on the basis of data from the National Accounts Institute. As a result of the underlying calculation method the changes of indirect employment and indirect value added can differ from one another. The developments concerning economic activity in the six ports in 2013 - 2014 are summarised in the table on the next page: In 2014 the growth of maritime traffic in the Flemish sea ports was once again due solely to developments in the port of Antwerp. However, that did not necessarily mean that direct value added followed the same trend: except for the port of Zeebrugge, all other Flemish ports recorded an increase. Direct employment is continuing to decline, except in the port of Ghent where it remains steady. Investment appears to be picking up, after last year’s weak figures. Cargo traffic in the ports of Liège and Brussels was up in 2014, but that did not result in any increase in value added. The decline in direct employment also persisted, certainly in the port of Liège. This report provides a comprehensive account of these issues, giving details for each economic sector, although the comments are confined to the main changes that occurred in 2014

Time-vaeying tail risk in the financial sector

This paper investigates the usefulness of time-varying tail risk in the financial sector. The findings of this paper support the notion that financial sector time-varying tail risk possesses predictive power over future market returns over a horizon of one-month, one-year, three-years and five-years and some predictive power over future financial crises. Within the financial sector there are four industries recognized; the banking, insurance, broker dealer and other industry. These industries all have a different level of systemic risk and thus pose different risks to the financial sector and in term to the real economy

The purification of aid : an ethnography of Dutch partnership policy and (broken) dreams of development

This thesis explores the shift from ownership to partnership policy in Dutch development aid. It is an ethnography based on participant observation during several periods between 2001 and 2006 in the Ministry’s headquarters in The Hague and the Dutch embassy in developing country Z. The aim of this research is neither to criticize nor to defend development aid. It does not address the issue of whether partnership policy is effective or if the implementation of this policy is efficient. Instead, this thesis explores policy practices to answer the question of how practitioners try to realize development through aid. It is argued that the current writings conceive development aid as a rational, instrumental policy process and ignores the practices of aid practitioners and, therefore, do not help us understand policy processes. Hence, this thesis develops a theoretical framework that pays attention to aid practitioners’ work and tries to understand how they make sense of development aid. This thesis points out that policy studies should pay attention to dreams of development, which are imaginary orders of an ideal world in which life is good. It shows that ownership and partnership policies express different dreams of development. Then, it shows how aid practitioners try to realize dreams of development through aid and, consequently, how development aid is shaped by different dreams of development. The theoretical framework developed in this thesis conceives policy processes as involving translation and purification practices. Translation is the mobilization and tying together of people, organizations, things, and interests. Purification is the keeping apart of people, organizations, and things because it is believed that they have fundamentally different interests. Hence, this thesis follows the trajectory of partnership from being a policy notion to becoming a public-private partnership project (PPP-project) with the Dutch pharmaceutical company in country Z. In this trajectory the focus is on the different dreams of development that are expressed in and aspired through partnership and the translation and purification processes that make possible or hamper the travelling of partnership. This study of partnership policy combines both the approach of ‘‘studying through”, by following the policy of partnership through time and space, and of ‘‘studying up”, by exploring the aid practices of ministerial officials as a professional elite. The studying of an elite has implications for the methodology of the study. To carry out the research, I had to sign a statement of confidentiality that says no state secrets can be made public. Therefore, this thesis does not reveal any material that is marked as classified in the ministry, but it does write about practices in the aid bureaucracy that are considered by many aid practitioners as public secrets, that is what is generally known about the practices of the state but cannot be articulated in official documents. This thesis contends that writing about the practices of the aid bureaucracy that are part of the state can make a valuable contribution to the debate on development aid. It can explain what keeps the aid bureaucracy together despite the fact that it is not a homogeneous, coherent entity and explicate what makes up development if it isn’t a well-defined, singular goal. The passages quoted in this thesis are both from official and unofficial documents and they also include e-mails between officials in the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The documents and e-mails on the PPP-project were filed in the official archives of the PPP-project in the Dutch Embassy in country Z. These e-mail exchanges are used to show how projects like the PPP are discussed and how practices of translation and purification are negotiated, resisted, and justified in the Ministry. For reasons of confidentiality, all people have been given fictional names except for the Dutch ministers for Development Cooperation. Furthermore, to protect the embassy staff, this thesis talks about the country where the PPP-project should be realized as country Z. Likewise, the Dutch pharmaceutical company is referred to as Pharmaco. The organization of the book is as follows: Chapter 1 describes the academic debate on partnership in development aid. It points out the limitations of the dominant analyses for our understanding of policy processes in development aid and provides a theoretical framework that can address these issues. Chapter 2 shows that studies of development aid should pay more attention to the dreams, ideals, values, fears, and beliefs that the aid policies express. Subsequently, this chapter explores the dreams of development of the three Dutch Ministers for Development Cooperation, Jan Pronk, Eveline Herfkens, and Agnes van Ardenne, over the period of 1989 until 2005. These dreams of development can be understood from the descriptions of the key events and important encounters in each minister’s life. The dreams of development can be traced in their policies; they are expressed in the symbolic language of ownership and partnership. Pronk used the concept of ownership to express a dream that takes into account power relations, while Van Ardenne’s concept of partnership expresses a dream that aims to unite people. Then, whereas Pronk and Herfkens communicate their dream of development in a technical-scientific way, Van Ardenne uses a personal and political way of communicating her dream of development. Because officials who have been trained in academia and worked for many years under Pronk and Herfkens, they have believe that partnership is a buzzword. Chapter 3 explores the assembling of a public-private partnership project (PPP-project) with the Dutch pharmaceutical company Pharmaco. It explains how in this project various actors with different dreams of development and aspirations in life are tied together in the PPP-project. The chapter describes how a project proposal designed to realize the dream of making contraceptives available and affordable worldwide is translated and transformed by a ministerial official to fit Minister Van Ardenne’s dream of development. It is explained why the person who designed that initial project, feels that his project has been ‘‘hijacked” by the Dutch ministry and why he, nonetheless, joins the project when Pharmaco invites him. Chapter 4 analyzes the transportation of the PPP-project from the headquarters in The Hague to country Z. It explores how an assessment team of representatives of the ministerial headquarters in The Hague and of Pharmaco select a country for the realization of the PPP-project. Then, it explains that the choice for country Z is based on where support for the project is thought to be highest and opposition minimal. It is shown that the selection process goes together with the contextualization of the PPP-project. Thus, this chapter shows that a project is not implemented in a context. Rather, a context is created around a project. Then, transportation implies the transformation of both the project and the context of a project. Chapter 5 shows how ministerial officials in the headquarters in The Hague and in the Dutch embassy in country Z discuss the PPP-project. The officials negotiate whether or not this PPP is a development project and how it can be transformed into one. Thus, they debate the sense or nonsense of the translations made by a ministerial official in the headquarters and argue if and how the PPP-project should be purified from Pharmaco’s interest in profit. We see in this that besides dreams of development, career aspirations, concerns for reputation, and ideas of what it means to be a good ministerial official also play a role in the negotiation on translation and purification of the PPP-project. Chapter 6 presents the main findings of this research and their theoretical implications. It concludes that the dividing policy processes into policy making and policy implementation is a theoretical misunderstanding as this thesis shows that policy processes consists of translation and purification practices, Yet, this model of policy making versus implementation is also a used as an argument by officials to legitimize particular translations and decline other interpretations. Furthermore, this thesis claims that only when we take dreams of development seriously, we can find a way out of the current cynicism in development aid

Wheat and barley seed system in Syria: farmers' varietal perceptions, seed sources and seed management

A total of 206 wheat and 200 barley farmers were interviewed in northeastern Syria to understand farmer perceptions and practice relating to modern varieties, seed sources and seed quality. Wheat farmers had better awareness and grew modern varieties (87%), applied fertilizers (99.5%), herbicides (93%), seed treatment (90%) or insecticides (41%). In contrast barley growers had low awareness (36%) and use (0.5%) of modern varieties, herbicides (4%), insecticides (3%) and fertilizers (56%). Grain yield, grain size, food quality and tolerance to lodging, drought and frost were the agronomic characteristics farmers sought from new wheat varieties. For barley, grain yield, grain size, grain color, feed quality, marketability and tolerance to diseases and drought were the key traits sought. The informal sector-seed retained from the previous harvest or obtained from neighbors or local traders/markets-was the main source of seed for both wheat and barley. Most farmers practiced onfarm seed selection, cleaning, treatment, separate storage or quality assessment of seed that was obtained locally. Farmers’ perceptions and preferences of new varieties/technologies and their seed sources and seed management practices must be taken into account in any efforts to develop or to strengthen seed sector developmen