علیرضا رنجبر

In recent years, the legal methods of dispute settlement have received more attention because of their positive features compared to other methods, and this has changed the role and status of international judges and arbitrators. Yet due to advances in technology as well as the development and promotion of science, disputes between the parties are not limited to legal issues anymore and need to be resolved by non-legal experts to pave the way for judges and arbitrators. Therefore, the process of employing non-legal experts has become an inseparable part of proceedings in international litigations and arbitrations. Despite the fact that the said process is considered a positive issue on the one hand and strengthens the credibility of the tribunals' decisions, on the other hand, it raises the question that whether the expansion of the role of non-legal experts in the process of proceedings in international litigations and arbitrations would affect the legal nature of these proceedings and the role of judges and arbitrators? It seems that existing concerns are connected to how non-legal experts are used rather than how they perform their role and this could be controlled and managed by judges and arbitrators themselves.

There is almost a consensus, in the case-law of the International Court of Justice and the opinions of its Judges, as well as in the doctrine, regarding the non-binding nature of the Advisory Opinions of the Court. However, for a variety of reasons, including the position of the Court as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, similar process for Judgments and Advisory Opinions to be taken into account by the Judges, the weight and credibility of the Judges of the Court, and putting the status of Advisory Opinions to no avail providing they are invalid, there is a disagreement about the legal effects of the Advisory Opinions of the International Court of Justice. The very recent ruling by the Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the Mauritius/ Maldives case in the preliminary objections, which relied on the International Court of Justice's 2019 Advisory Opinion’s findings in the “Legal Consequences of the Separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965”, led to the rejection of one of the Maldivian government's preliminary objections which bring about the effect of Advisory Opinion’s topic to the center of international law once again.

An acronym for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the “JCPOA” paved the way for multinational as well as major and small foreign companies to invest in different potential areas in the Iranian market and infrastructure right after the United Nations, the European Union and the United States have lifted sanctions. However, these were temporary and the U.S. Administration withdrew from the nuclear deal and re-imposed its secondary sanctions against Iran. Immediately after the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions, foreign companies have terminated or suspended their contractual obligations without considering the legal consequences. Since then, the situation for Iranian companies is quite different; foreign companies are prohibited from working with Iran, and banking transactions are halted by foreign banks owing to U.S. sanctions. In fact, they cannot evade their responsibility under the withdrawal of the U.S. from the JCPOA and the re-imposition of sanctions. Contractual commitments of the parties to a contract with Iranian entities must be respected and enforced; otherwise, they must compensate all losses and damages. The Defense of force majeure cannot be invoked, particularly for European companies, since U.S. sanctions were foreseeable. European Union’s Blocking Statute, lack of good faith, and the due diligence for the fulfillment of their obligations as to humanitarian exemptions and exceptions indicating force majeure could not be upheld here too. Therefore, Iranian companies shall raise their claims based on dispute settlement clauses stipulated in their contracts with foreign parties and other legal mechanisms in order to establish a concrete procedure to deal with on-going and future situations regarding secondary sanctions.

Innovation policy studies contain a broad mix of approaches with different intellectual foundations on why and how to lead innovation in the interests of society. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe the mainstream theories during the historical evolution of Innovation policy studies and to explain the differences between the responses of these theories to the main questions of innovation policy. In this way, a collection of highly cited research publications on science, technology, and innovation policy from 1950 to 2020 has been studied and thematically analyzed. As the result of this study, by extracting key themes from research publications, six generations of innovation policy introduced, each of them emerged and expanded in a different historical period, and are from the first generation (the 1940s) to the sixth (present decade), respectively: Linear; Traditional mission-oriented; Normative; Systematic; Transformative; And New mission-oriented innovation policy. The theoretical evolution of innovation policy generations shows that along with broadening the meaning of innovation and identifying more reasons for its failure, more reasons and justifications for the government's role in compensating the innovation failures have been introduced. This study shows that based on the insights of recent generations of studies, the innovation policy agenda should be formulated with the participation of different social groups, in various industrial and social fields and considering social and environmental costs.

The purpose of study is to Individual Initiative and Job Burnout as antecedents of Employee Expediency and the moderating role of Conscientiousness. The present research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey of correlational type in terms of method. The statistical population included the employees (1370 people) of Yazd Province Welfare Bank who were selected through Cochran 300 people for the year 1400. The data collection tool was a questionnaire that had good validity and reliability.The results of testing the hypotheses, showed That the Individual Initiative on Job Burnout and Employee Expediency have a strong, direct and significant impact and a weak, direct and indirect, and significant impact, respectively; Job Burnout on Employee Expediency has moderate, direct and significant effects; Also, Job Burnout can play a mediating role in influencing the Individual Initiative on Employee Expediency. Finally, Conscientiousness can play a moderating role in influencing the Individual Initiative on Employee Expediency & the Job Burnout on Employee Expediency. According to the model of Conceptual, it can be expected that the bank can pay attention to the expediency of employees in order to advance its goals. Of course, if the level of conscientiousness is used to promote the expediency of employees, because the model showed, if conscientiousness is ignored, heavy natures such as employee burnout and individual initiative for the bank will occur

Cyber-attacks are unknown spheres in international law due to the abstract nature of cyber-space and their intangible implications in relation to the objective space. The pursuit of international law in cyber-space, such as the advent of Alice in Wonderland, is full of wonders that, when compared with the world’s objective laws, the correct answer cannot be found for the events that occur within it. This process has led to the emergence of barriers to the development of international law governing cyber-attacks, most of which include the weakness of international legal literature on the concept of cyber-attacks and the weakness of communication between the real world and the cyber/virtual world. Although the principles and rules of international law respond partly to some of the international legal aspects of cyber-crime attacks, disagreement among governments suggests that current responses are inadequate  and inconsistencies prevail. However, two general approaches namely drafting regional and international treaties and confidence-building measures might be introduced in order to overcome the fundamental obstacles that hinder the development of international law governing cyber-attacks, through which international legal literature relating to cyber-attacks could be well-developed.

Anxiety disorders are among most prevalent diseases in our society and various tools for measuring anxiety have been largely based on symptoms and no tool yet invented to specifically measure anxiety in Iran.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of anxiety control questionnaire in Iran.For this purpose, by an analytical - sectional study, 250 students of an educational center were selected by cluster sampling that completed the Beck Anxiety questionnaire, Depression, Anxiety, Stress scale and Anxiety Control Questionnaire. The construct validity was used to determine exploratory factor analysis, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients was performed to determine the internal consistency and correlation coefficient of Anxiety questionnaire with Beck Anxiety questionnaire and Depression, Anxiety, Stress scale was used to assess convergent and divergent validity.
Data analysis revealed that the reliability using Cronbach's alpha was 0/89. In addition to study the convergent validity and divergent validity of the questionnaire, the Beck Anxiety and Depression, Anxiety, Stress scale (DASS) was applied which resulted in the validity of anxiety control Questionnaire. Finally, four factors were extracted using factor analysis that would explain 46/11 percent of the scores.
With regard to the validity and reliability of the questionnaire, it seems to be an appropriate tool for clinical assessment.

Development of military Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has led the governments possessing these kinds of technology to go beyond the geographic and legal boundaries such that the employment of those instruments has brought International Humanitarian Law (IHL) procedural and substantive challenges; as the former governs the method of using of those tools and the latter governs the procedure of controlling the UAVs. Obviously, the emergence of procedural and substantive challenges from the development of military UAVs demands the necessity of re-reading of traditional regulations and passing new laws in the field. Although, the current principles and regulations considerably cover various dimensions of modern technologies, including the employment of drones, both in present and future, using advanced technologies might possibly provide grounds for governments to misuse the existing gaps as the regulations of IHL are unable to fully provide a clear answer in handling all of those difficulties. In this regards, it is essential to take crucial steps in developing and drawing new frameworks for using and controlling modern military technologies including military UAVs.

The Chapter VIII of the United Nations Charter which is devoted exclusively to the regional arrangements is an essential factor in strengthening and expanding the role of regional organizations, especially in the maintenance of peace and security after the creation of the United Nations, In a way that one of the established and common principles of such organizations, as stipulated in the Article 1(1) of the Charter, is to help the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security which is interconnected with regional peace and security. Due to the capacity of regional organizations to maintain international and regional peace and security, which has been emphasized in the Article 52(3) of the Charter and Security Council’s resolutions, studying the role which could be played by one of the newly created institutions in the Latin America, i.e. the Union of South American Nations, indicates that it has significant influence on the maintenance of international and regional peace andsecurity. This Organization by highlighting confidence and security-building measures, instead of adopting an interventionist approach and coercive measures, seeks to strengthen the positive concept of peace.

Since the beginning of history, scientific progresshas been effective on the state of peace through employing two major tools: the hardware tools and the software tools. Although in the period before the adoption of the United Nation Charter, military hardware tools ranging from sword, bows and arrows in ancient time to submarines and fighter jets at present, all have been serving as inseparable part as well as one of the main factors involved in the break of wars, but after the adoption of the United Nations Charter, the states procedures underwent changes particularly due to the impacts of the two World Wars on humanity’s destiny and parallel to maintaining peace. Governments have been also moving towards using non-military hardware tools including international and regional organizations, with the United Nations on top of all. Furthermore, after accepting the Charter, governments have been aware of the attention paid by the international community to software tools which serve as a collection of duties and liabilities in regional and international levels as the product of the activities rendered by the global political actors, particularly the international laws [activists]. This is an important issue especially knowing that software tools implementation relies on hardware tools and in some extent, it is the introductory procedure of using the recent tools in the post UN international community. Although one might easily highlight the positive application of software tools; particularly after the establishment of the United Nations, there exists the risk of negative use or misuse of those tools as well.