Locating the housing crisis in Kuwaiti state, land and society

Despite the oil wealth and hyper-welfare provision to its citizens, Kuwait has seen the rise of a ‘housing crisis’ discourse in recent years. This paper aims to provide an opportunity to understand the nature of Kuwait’s housing crisis and the reasons behind the state’s perceived inability to respond to it. Through the analysis of research findings from the field, we argue that the housing crisis in Kuwait is socially constructed, reflecting the multi- layered conditions of historic provision and consumption of housing in Kuwaiti society. The formulation of the housing crisis can be further disaggregated into (a) the crisis of the Kuwaiti welfare state, (b) the crisis of land development and (c) the society in crisis. Tackling the housing crisis, therefore, requires a holistic approach that involves multi-level stakeholder engagement, including a wide range of citizens. Our study on housing in Kuwait draws attention to the country’s contemporary state–society relations and the complexities of housing crises unfolding globally

What is Needed the Most in MT-Supported Paper Writing

PACLIC / The University of the Philippines Visayas Cebu College Cebu City, Philippines / November 20-22, 200

Temperature dependence of Mott transition in VO_2 and programmable critical temperature sensor

The temperature dependence of the Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) is studied with a VO_2-based two-terminal device. When a constant voltage is applied to the device, an abrupt current jump is observed with temperature. With increasing applied voltages, the transition temperature of the MIT current jump decreases. We find a monoclinic and electronically correlated metal (MCM) phase between the abrupt current jump and the structural phase transition (SPT). After the transition from insulator to metal, a linear increase in current (or conductivity) is shown with temperature until the current becomes a constant maximum value above T_{SPT}=68^oC. The SPT is confirmed by micro-Raman spectroscopy measurements. Optical microscopy analysis reveals the absence of the local current path in micro scale in the VO_2 device. The current uniformly flows throughout the surface of the VO_2 film when the MIT occurs. This device can be used as a programmable critical temperature sensor.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Ionothermal Synthesis of Metal-Organic Framework

Ionothermal synthesis employs ionic liquids for synthesis of metal organic frameworks (MOFs) as solvent and template. The cations and anions of ionic liquids may be finely adjusted to produce a great variety of reaction environments and thus frameworks. Organisation of the structures synthesised from related ionic liquid combinations give rise to provocative chemical trends that may be used to predict future outcomes. Further analysis of their structures is possible by reducing the complex framework to its underlying topology, which by itself brings more precision to prediction. Through reduction, many seemingly different, but related classes of structures may be merged into larger groups and provide better understanding of the nanoscopic structures and synthesis conditions that gave rise to them. Ionothermal synthesis has promised to enable us to effectively plan the synthesis ahead for a given purpose. However, for its promise to be kept, several difficult limitations must be overcome, including the inseparable cations from the solvent that reside in the framework pore