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

Value Discount of Business Groups Surrounding the Asia Financial Crisis: Evidence from Korean Chaebols

Asian Financial Crisis, Business Group, Chaebol, Diversification, Firm Value

Two Cases of Lichen Planus Pigmentosus Presenting with a Linear Pattern

We report two cases of lichen planus pigmentosus (LPP) that developed in a unilateral linear pattern. The patients presented with unilateral linear brown macules on the extremities. Skin biopsy showed orthokeratosis, basal hydropic degeneration with scarce lymphohistiocytic infiltrates, and numerous melanophages in both patients. These patients, to the best of our knowledge, are the first cases of LPP presenting with a linear pattern. LPP should be considered in the differential diagnosis of linear hyperpigmented skin lesions

Contextual Linear Bandits under Noisy Features: Towards Bayesian Oracles

We study contextual linear bandit problems under uncertainty on features; they are noisy with missing entries. To address the challenges from the noise, we analyze Bayesian oracles given observed noisy features. Our Bayesian analysis finds that the optimal hypothesis can be far from the underlying realizability function, depending on noise characteristics, which is highly non-intuitive and does not occur for classical noiseless setups. This implies that classical approaches cannot guarantee a non-trivial regret bound. We thus propose an algorithm aiming at the Bayesian oracle from observed information under this model, achieving $\tilde{O}(d\sqrt{T})$ regret bound with respect to feature dimension $d$ and time horizon $T$. We demonstrate the proposed algorithm using synthetic and real-world datasets.Comment: 30 page

A Cost Effective Block Framing Scheme for Underwater Communication

In this paper, the Selective Multiple Acknowledgement (SMA) method, based on Multiple Acknowledgement (MA), is proposed to efficiently reduce the amount of data transmission by redesigning the transmission frame structure and taking into consideration underwater transmission characteristics. The method is suited to integrated underwater system models, as the proposed method can handle the same amount of data in a much more compact frame structure without any appreciable loss of reliability. Herein, the performance of the proposed SMA method was analyzed and compared to those of the conventional Automatic Repeat-reQuest (ARQ), Block Acknowledgement (BA), block response, and MA methods. The efficiency of the underwater sensor network, which forms a large cluster and mostly contains uplink data, is expected to be improved by the proposed method

Ciliated muconodular papillary tumor of the lung: The risk of false-positive diagnosis in frozen section

AbstractCiliated muconodular papillary tumor (CMPT) is newly-defined low-grade malignant tumor, characterized as papillary tumor consisting of ciliated columnar, goblet, and basal cells. We present one case of pulmonary peripheral neoplasm misdiagnosed as mucinous adenocarcinoma. Pathologic findings showed, centrally, cystic papillary growth consisting of ciliated columnar, goblet, and basal cells, and peripherally, some tumor cells spread along the adjacent alveolar walls, in a lepidic fashion, and floating in pool of mucin. Tumor cells had bland nuclei, and no mitotic activity was observed. This had been initially misdiagnosed as mucinous adenocarcinoma in frozen section. We reviewed previous articles as well as permanent and frozen slides. In conclusion, in order to reduce the possibility of false positives, it is important to be aware that CMPT is a rare form of peripheral mucin-producing tumor with characteristic histologic findings