The “Iranian ART Revolution”: infertility, assisted reproductive technology, and third-party donation in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Infertility is a social onus for women in Iran, who are expected to produce children early within marriage. With its estimated 1.5 million infertile couples, Iran is the only Muslim country in which assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) using donor gametes and embryos have been legitimized by religious authorities and passed into law. Th is has placed Iran, a Shia-dominant country, in a unique position vis-à-vis the Sunni Islamic world, where all forms of gamete donation are strictly prohibited. In this article, we first examine the “Iranian ART revolution” that has allowed donor technologies to be admitted as a form of assisted reproduction. Then we examine the response of Iranian women to their infertility and the profound social pressures they face. We argue that the experience of infertility and its treatment are mediated by women’s socioeconomic position within Iranian society. Many women lack economic access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) technologies and fear the moral consequences of gamete donation. Thus, the benefits of the Iranian ART revolution are mixed: although many Iranian women have been able to overcome their infertility through ARTs, not all women’s lives are improved by these technologies.

Trends in National Party support

The National Party of Australia is under challenge. Will it be able to adapt and survive or will it become increasingly irrelevant in Australian politics? With population growth in some coastal and hinterland areas and decline in inland agricultural areas, the face of rural and regional Australia is changing. As a result, the National Party's traditional support is being eroded. Within the long-standing Coalition, the influence of the Nationals appears to be in decline, yet they continue to resist amalgamation with the Liberal Party.

Consumer satisfaction and redress with a government third-party complaints agency

As governments around the world adopt a marketing orientation, the importance of consumer satisfaction to the effectiveness of the organization is being recognized. While some investigation of satisfaction with a government agencies' service has occurred, there is little examination of satisfaction with a government agency that acts as a third-party on the behalf of consumers to gain marketplace redress. Given the number of third-party complaints is increasing as a result of internet access to complaint channels, this research is a timely investigation. This study reports the findings of a survey of 454 complainants to an Australian Government agency: the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). The findings show that satisfaction with the service was subjectively experienced, based around individual expectations of the redress and satisfaction levels were higher when the redress sought was financial compared with non-financial forms of redress such as apology.

If Kate voted conservative would you? The role of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising

Purpose – This research has been conducted with the aim of determining if celebrity endorsers in political party advertising have a significant impact on UK voter intentions. The use of celebrity endorsements is commonplace in the USA, but little is known about its effects in the UK. This research also aims to incorporate the use of celebrity endorsements in political party advertising with the political salience construct. Political salience represents how prominent politics and political issues are in the minds of the eligible voter. Design/methodology/approach – A 2 (endorser: celebrity; non-celebrity) £ 2 (political salience: high; low) between-subjects factorial design experiment was used. The results show that celebrity endorsements do play a significant role in attitudes towards the political advert, attitudes towards the endorser and voter intention. However, this effect is significantly moderated by political salience. Findings – The results show that low political salience respondents were significantly more likely to vote for the political party when a celebrity endorser is used. However, the inverse effect is found for high political salience respondents. Practical implications – The results offer significant insights into the effect that celebrity endorsers could have in future elections and the importance that political salience plays in the effectiveness of celebrity endorsement. If political parties are to target those citizens that do not actively engage with politics then the use of celebrity endorsements would make a significant impact, given the results of this research. Originality/value – This research would be of particular interest to political party campaigners as well as academics studying the effects of advertising and identity salience.

Privacy v IP Litigation : preliminary third party discovery on the Internet

The enforcement of Intellectual Property rights poses one of the greatest current threats to the privacy of individuals online. Recent trends have shown that the balance between privacy and intellectual property enforcement has been shifted in favour of intellectual property owners. This article discusses the ways in which the scope of preliminary discovery and Anton Piller orders have been overly expanded in actions where large amounts of electronic information is available, especially against online intermediaries (service providers and content hosts). The victim in these cases is usually the end user whose privacy has been infringed without a right of reply and sometimes without notice. This article proposes some ways in which the delicate balance can be restored, and considers some safeguards for user privacy. These safeguards include restructuring the threshold tests for discovery, limiting the scope of information disclosed, distinguishing identity discovery from information discovery, and distinguishing information preservation from preliminary discovery.

Leaving home for the party on the roof : Brisbane music and musicians

It lies 27°S of the Equator, wrapped uneasily around a wide, muddy river. Three years ago, Brisbane was identified by Billboard Magazine as one of six “hot spots” of independent music in the world. A place to watch. Someone turned a torch on this town, had a quick look, moved on. But this town has always had music in it. Some of it made by me. So, I’m taking my connection with this town, the music and the people, and working it into a contextual historical analysis of the creative lives of Brisbane musicians, and by extension, of Brisbane’s music and Brisbane itself. Talking about what music means to us, how it figures in our lives, and considering the notion, among other factors, of ‘place’ in both our creative practice and creative output. This paper offers an analysis of a particular auto/ethnographic method. How lives are organized and intensified by sounds made and heard in particular social and geographic settings. How music can be the thread which, when pulled, unravels stories, reveals certain truths about musicians and their relationships to one another, to family, to place and to their work.

Practice and procedure : a recent Court of Appeal case examines the meaning of 'third party payer' in terms of Part 3.4 of the Legal Profession Act 2007.

In Legal Services Commissioner v Wright [2010] QCA 321 the Queensland Court of Appeal allowed an appeal from the first instance decision. The decision involved the construction of “third party payer” in Part 3.4 of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld).

Composing services for third-party service delivery

This paper proposes a model-based technique for lowering the entrance barrier for service providers to register services with a marketplace broker, such that the service is rapidly configured to utilize the brokerpsilas local service delivery management components. Specifically, it uses process modeling for supporting the execution steps of a service and shows how service delivery functions (e.g. payment points) ldquolocalrdquo to a service broker can be correctly configured into the process model. By formalizing the different operations in a service delivery function (like payment or settlement) and their allowable execution sequences (full payments must follow partial payments), including cross-function dependencies, it shows how through tool support, the non-technical user can quickly configure service delivery functions in a consistent and complete way.

Non-party disclosure - UCPR r 242(2)

In TSPD Pty Ltd v Resortrez Pty Ltd [2008] QSC 001 Fryberg J made an order permitting the applicant to inspect and copy documents which had been produced to the court under a subpoena, but had remained in the registry. Though not essential to the decision the judgment contains some interesting discussion about the construction of r 242 of the Uniform Civil Procedure Rules 1999 (Qld) (UCPR).

Don's Party and the AV Jennings type 15 home

Australian housing underwent a watershed when 1960s mass-produced houses slowly started subscribing to a new aesthetic of continuous living spaces, known as the ‘open plan’ home. This created a new landscape for Australian playwrights to observe and explore in their work when representing domesticity on the stage. Instead of representing a single room of the house on the stage, plays such as ‘Don’s Party’, started to work with a number of openly connected spaces bound by doorways to private sections of the house or to specific outdoor areas. In representing this dialectic between interior and the exterior, private and public spaces in the home, the continuous spaces of the AV Jennings house in ‘Don’s Party’ acted to blur these conditions creating an outer interior. These connected spaces became the place for an outward performance on the family’s interiority, while simultaneously presenting a boundary to an inner interior in the offstage spaces of the home. This paper focuses on the play 'Don's Party' by David Williamson and how the spatial arrangements of the AV Jennings home, in which it was set, influenced the playwright. The research includes a textual analysis of the play, biographical research and interviews with the playwright alongside an analysis of the spatial arrangements of AV Jennings houses.

Practice and Procedure: UCPR r 708 - costs order against several defendants and third party

Glenwood Homes Pty Ltd v Everhard [2008] QSC 192 involved the not uncommon situation where one costs order is made against several parties represented by a single firm of solicitors. Dutney J considered the implications when only some of the parties liable for the payment of the costs file a notice of objection to the costs statement served in respect of those costs.

Briefing paper on eTextbooks and third party eLearning products and their implications for Australian university libraries

The briefing paper was commissioned by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) to examine the current picture and evolving role of electronic textbooks (eTextbooks) and third party eLearning products in the academic arena. The study reviews industry trends, identifies the major players and considers the different stakeholder perspectives of eTextbook adoption. Within the context of learning and teaching in the digital age, specific areas of research, policy and practice are highlighted to consider the implications that eTextbooks might have for universities in general and for university libraries in particular. An environmental scan focused on the analysis of current developments and the anticipated future directions of digital learning resources in Australia, as well as in other major English speaking countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. This research guided the development of key interview questions aimed at examining, at a deeper level, diverse stakeholder perspectives about the roles university libraries can play in the adoption of digital learning content.

David M. Thomas : a party disguised as work or work disguised as a party

This article discusses David M. Thomas' 2012 exhibition at Boxcopy. Thomas' exhibition conflates the space of the studio with that of the gallery. In doing so, he draws out complex relationships between production and presentation, subjectivity and sociality. This article focuses on these aspects of Thomas' creative exploration of identity and its mutability through art making.