Lt. Colonel Rachel (Rae) Diane Landy papers undated, 1913-2000

Rachel Diane Landy Papers consist of correspondence, reminiscences, legal documents, journal, newspaper and magazine articles and color Xerox copies of photographs as well as original photographs. This collection is of value to researchers studying the history of Hadassah and the living conditions and state of medical care in Palestine during the second decade of the 20th century. It is also of interest to researchers studying women in America during the first half of the 20th century who were able to pursue a challenging and productive career and become a leader and innovator in their chosen field. In addition it will be of interest to those researching the graduates of the Cleveland public and professional schools at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, and the Cleveland Jewish community and the George Crile U.S. Army Hospital in Cleveland during the 1940's.

American Jewish Committee. Office of Jewish War Records, undated, 1918-1921, 1962.

The records consist of documentation of the American Jewish Committee's project to describe Jewish participation in the United States Armed Forces during World War I. The bulk of the material consists of questionnaires that the AJC sent to servicemen to determine Jewish identity, which contain information on personal identification and details of military service. Responses to the questionnaire come from both Jews and non-Jews. In addition, the collection contains office papers concerning the project and a ledger of manuscripts. The manuscripts document the distribution of records the Office of Jewish War Records collected, as well as list Jews who died or were given military honors.

Diet of dingoes and other wild dogs in peri-urban areas of north-eastern Australia

Knowledge of the resource requirements of urban predators can improve our understanding of their ecology and assist town planners and wildlife management agencies in developing management approaches that alleviate human-wildlife conflicts. Here we examine food and dietary items identified in scats of dingoes in peri-urban areas of north-eastern Australia to better understand their resource requirements and the potential for dingoes to threaten locally fragmented populations of native fauna. Our primary aim was to determine what peri-urban dingoes eat, and whether or not this differs between regions. We identified over 40 different food items in dingo scats, almost all of which were mammals. Individual species commonly observed in dingo scats included agile wallabies, northern brown bandicoots and swamp wallabies. Birds were relatively common in some areas but not others, as were invertebrates. Dingoes were identified as a significant potential threat to fragmented populations of koalas. Dietary overlap was typically very high or near-identical between regions, indicating that peri-urban dingoes ate the same types or sizes of prey in different areas. Future studies should seek to quantify actual and perceived impacts of, and human attitudes towards, peri-urban dingoes, and to develop management strategies with a greater chance of reducing human-wildlife conflicts.

A generic method of engagement to elicit regional coastal management options

Stakeholder engagement is important for successful management of natural resources, both to make effective decisions and to obtain support. However, in the context of coastal management, questions remain unanswered on how to effectively link decisions made at the catchment level with objectives for marine biodiversity and fisheries productivity. Moreover, there is much uncertainty on how to best elicit community input in a rigorous manner that supports management decisions. A decision support process is described that uses the adaptive management loop as its basis to elicit management objectives, priorities and management options using two case studies in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The approach described is then generalised for international interest. A hierarchical engagement model of local stakeholders, regional and senior managers is used. The result is a semi-quantitative generic elicitation framework that ultimately provides a prioritised list of management options in the context of clearly articulated management objectives that has widespread application for coastal communities worldwide. The case studies show that demand for local input and regional management is high, but local influences affect the relative success of both engagement processes and uptake by managers. Differences between case study outcomes highlight the importance of discussing objectives prior to suggesting management actions, and avoiding or minimising conflicts at the early stages of the process. Strong contributors to success are a) the provision of local information to the community group, and b) the early inclusion of senior managers and influencers in the group to ensure the intellectual and time investment is not compromised at the final stages of the process. The project has uncovered a conundrum in the significant gap between the way managers perceive their management actions and outcomes, and community's perception of the effectiveness (and wisdom) of these same management actions.

Policing online fraud in Australia: The emergence of a victim‐oriented approach

Online fraud is a global problem. Millions of individuals worldwide are losing money and experiencing the devastation associated with becoming a victim of online fraud. In 2014, Australians reported losses of $82 million as a result of online fraud to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Given that the ACCC is one of many agencies that receives victim complaints, and the extent of under‐reporting of online fraud, this figure is likely to represent only a fraction of the actual monetary losses incurred. The successful policing of online fraud is hampered by its transnational nature, the prevalence of false/stolen identities used by offenders, and a lack of resources available to investigate offences. In addition, police are restricted by the geographical boundaries of their own jurisdictions which conflicts with the lack of boundaries afforded to offenders by the virtual world. In response to this, Australia is witnessing the emergence of victim‐oriented policing approaches to counter online fraud victimisation. This incorporates the use of financial intelligence as a tool to proactively notify potential victims of online fraud. Using a variety of Australian examples, this paper documents the history to this new approach and considers the significance that such a shift represents to policing in a broader context. It also details the value that this approach can have to both victims and law enforcement agencies. Overall, it is argued that a victim‐oriented approach to policing online fraud can have substantial benefits to police and victims alike.

Tutoring with higher mathematics and the use of technology

We discuss three approaches to the use of technology as a teaching and learning tool that we are currently implementing for a target group of about one hundred second level engineering mathematics students. Central to these approaches is the underlying theme of motivating relatively poorly motivated students to learn, with the aim of improving learning outcomes. The approaches to be discussed have been used to replace, in part, more traditional mathematics tutorial sessions and lecture presentations. In brief, the first approach involves the application of constructivist thinking in the tertiary education arena, using technology as a computational and visual tool to create motivational knowledge conflicts or crises. The central idea is to model a realistic process of how scientific theory is actually developed, as proposed by Kuhn (1962), in contrast to more standard lecture and tutorial presentations. The second approach involves replacing procedural or algorithmic pencil-and-paper skills-consolidation exercises by software based tasks. Finally, the third approach aims at creating opportunities for higher order thinking via "on-line" exploratory or discovery mode tasks. The latter incorporates the incubation period method, as originally discussed by Rubinstein (1975) and others.

Small State Cultures of Consensus : State Traditions and Consensus-Seeking in the Neo-Corporatist and Neutrality Policies in Post-1945 Austria and Finland

Austria and Finland are persistently referred to as the “success stories” of post-1945 European history. Notwithstanding their different points of departure, in the course of the Cold War both countries portrayed themselves as small and neutral border-states in the world dictated by superpower politics. By the 1970s, both countries frequently ranked at the top end in various international classifications regarding economic development and well-being in society. This trend continues today. The study takes under scrutiny the concept of consensus which figures centrally in the two national narratives of post-1945 success. Given that the two domestic contexts as such only share few direct links with one another and are more obviously different than similar in terms of their geographical location, historical experiences and politico-cultural traditions, the analogies and variations in the anatomies of the post-1945 “cultures of consensus” provide an interesting topic for a historical comparative and cross-national examination. The main research question concerns the identification and analysis of the conceptual and procedural convergence points of the concepts of the state and consensus. The thesis is divided into six main chapters. After the introduction, the second chapter presents the theoretical framework in more detail by focusing on the key concepts of the study – the state and consensus. Chapter two also introduces the comparative historical and cross-national research angles. Chapter three grounds the key concepts of the state and consensus in the historical contexts of Austria and Finland by discussing the state, the nation and democracy in a longer term comparative perspective. The fourth and fifth chapter present case studies on the two policy fields, the “pillars”, upon which the post-1945 Austrian and Finnish cultures of consensus are argued to have rested. Chapter four deals with neo-corporatist features in the economic policy making and chapter five discusses the building up of domestic consensus regarding the key concepts of neutrality policies in the 1950s and 1960s. The study concludes that it was not consensus as such but the strikingly intense preoccupation with the theme of domestic consensus that cross-cut, in a curiously analogous manner, the policy-making processes studied. The main challenge for the post-1945 architects of Austrian and Finnish cultures of consensus was to find strategies and concepts for consensus-building which would be compatible with the principles of democracy. Discussed at the level of procedures, the most important finding of the study concerns the triangular mechanism of coordination, consultation and cooperation that set into motion and facilitated a new type of search for consensus in both post-war societies. In this triangle, the agency of the state was central, though in varying ways. The new conceptions concerning a small state’s position in the Cold War world also prompted cross-nationally perceivable willingness to reconsider inherited concepts and procedures of the state and the nation. At the same time, the ways of understanding the role of the state and its relation to society remained profoundly different in Austria and Finland and this basic difference was in many ways reflected in the concepts and procedures deployed in the search for consensus and management of domestic conflicts. For more detailed information, please consult the author.

Herrat, jätkät ja sotataito : Kansalaissotilas- ja ammattisotilasarmeijan rakentuminen 1920- ja 1930-luvulla

Gentlemen, Lads and the Art of War The Construction of Citizen Soldier- and Professional Soldier Armies into the Miracle of the Winter War During the 1920s and 1930s The Miracle of the Winter War was not a myth - at least according to them, who were making that miracle to happen. This study is not just about the Armed Forces and society, but moreover a study about civil society inside the organization of armed forces. Conscription kept Finnish military organization (and is still keeping) very closely connected with civil society and therefore there is no need to locate the possible critical misunderstandings brought by two different identity-based approaches. The great performance of the Armed Forces during the Second World War was not made of superior art of war. It was not the high level of discipline either. Art of war is basically a (deep level) cultural level equation that has more to do with culturally absorbed schemes of meaning making than rational decision-making. Naturally attrition based approach to effect-making directed the organizational methods in attrition based organisational practices, where there were only minor possibilities to practice any manoeuvre-based organisational behaviour. The practice and method of leadership lent similarly to the attrition-based thinking, which directed the organisational cultural thoughts towards composition that confirmed antagonism between gentlemen and lads . This setting has been absorbed and learned through cultural socialisation and was therefore not a product of the military organisation itself. The Finnish Armed Forces included two different communities (gentlemen and lads) within the same organisation as there were both the official and the unofficial organisations presented. This caused problems as they both made meaning-making processes simultaneously. These organisations had their own overlapping and in most cases also contradictory social meanings. The unofficial organisation has been overshadowed by the vast number of studies concerning the official organisation. The main reason for this systematic neglect is based on the reality of the attitudes and living conditions of the micro-level organisation which produced (perhaps) too realistic and repulsive viewpoints that are presenting a picture of a national level identity process in a way that is separating it from the ideals made to verify the ethos of national values. Complaining, griping, grumbling and moaning are usually situated in a category of abnormal and unwanted behaviour. However, within the context of a citizen soldier army community this was more of a characteristic feature of that organisation (in Finland) and therefore it was crucially important to locate the context of that abnormal behaviour. According to this study, it was not a malicious act but moreover seriously formed efforts in trying to use common sense in the chaos citizen soldiers faced when they were uniformed and placed in an unfamiliar process of disciplinary measures and frictions and competition between different ranks. There is much evidence that reinforces the argument that what seemed to be the most unconventional behaviour was finally the most efficient in a sense of military performance.

State Agent, Identity and the "New World Order" : Reconstructing Polish Defence Identity after the Cold War Era

National identity signifies and makes state s defence- and foreign policy behaviour meaningful. National consciousness is narrated into existence by narratives upon one s own exceptionalism and Otherness of the other nations. While national identity may be understood merely as a self-image of a nation, defence identity refers to the borders of Otherness and issues that have been considered as worth defending for. As national identities and all the world order models are human constructions, they may be changed by the human efforts as well; states and nations may deliberately promote communitarian or even cosmopolitan equality and tolerance without borders of Otherness. The main research question of the thesis is: How does Poland constitute herself as a nation and a state agent in the current world order and to what extent have contextual foreign and defence policy interactions changed the Polish defence identity during the post-Cold War era? The main empirical argument of the thesis is: Poland is a narrated idea of a Christian Catholic nation-state, which the Polish State, the Catholic Church of Poland, the Armed Forces of Poland as well as a majority of the Polish nation share. Polish defence identity has been almost impenetrable to contextual foreign and defence policy interactions during the post-Cold War era. While Christian religious ontology binds corporate Poland together, allowing her to survive any number of military and political catastrophes, it simultaneously brings her closer to the USA, raises tensions in the infidel EU-context, and restrains corporate Poland s pursuit of communitarian, or even cosmopolitan, global equality and tolerance. It is not the case that corporate Poland s foreign and defence policy orientation is instinctively Atlanticist by nature, as has been argued. Rather, it has been the State s rational project to overcome a habituated and reified fear of becoming geopolitically sandwiched between Russian and German Others by leaning on the USA; among the Polish nation, support for the USA has been declining since 2004. It is not corporate Poland either that has turned into a constructive European , as has been argued, but rather the Polish nation that has, at least partly, managed to emancipate itself from its habituation to a betrayal by Europe narrative, since it favours the EU as much as it favours NATO. It seems that in the Polish case a truly common European CFSP vis-à-vis Russia may offer a solution that will emancipate the Polish State from its habituated EU-sceptic role identity and corporate Poland from its narrated borders of Otherness towards Russia and Germany, but even then one cannot be sure whether any other perspective than the Polish one on a common stand towards Russia would satisfy the Poles themselves.

Traditional Village Governance (Desa Adat) and Inter-ethnic Conflict in Bali : A Study of Conflict between Balinese and Migrants: Cases from Municipality of Denpasar

Regional autonomy in Indonesia was initially introduced as a means of pacifying regional disappointment at the central government. Not only did the Regional Autonomy Law of 1999 give the Balinese a chance to express grievance regarding the centralist policies of the Jakarta government but also provided an opportunity to return to the regional, exclusive, traditional village governance (desa adat). As a result, the problems faced by the island, particularly ethnic conflicts, are increasingly handled by the mechanism of this traditional type of governance. Traditional village governance with regard to ethnic conflicts (occurring) between Balinese and migrants has never been systematically analyzed. Existing analyses emphasized only the social context, but do not explain either the cause of conflicts and the ensuing problems entails or the virtues of traditional village governance mechanisms for mediating in the conflict. While some accounts provide snapshots, they lack both theoretical and conflict study perspective. The primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the expression and the causes of conflict between the Balinese and migrants and to advance the potential of traditional village governance as a means of conflict resolution with particular reference to the municipality of Denpasar. One conclusion of the study is that the conflict between the Balinese and migrants has been expressed on the level of situation/contradiction, attitudes, and behavior. Yet the driving forces behind the conflict itself consist of the following factors: absence of cooperation; incompatible position and perception; inability to communicate effectively; and problem of inequality and injustice, which comes to the surface as a social, cultural, and economic problem. This complex of factors fuels collective fear for the future of both groups. The study concludes that traditional village governance mechanisms as a means of conflict resolution have not yet been able to provide an enduring resolution for the conflict. Analysis shows that the practice of traditional village governance is unable to provide satisfactory mechanisms for the conflict as prescribed by conflict resolution theory. Traditional village governance, which is derived from the exclusive Hindu-Balinese culture, is accepted as more legitimate among the Balinese than the official governance policies. However, it is not generally accepted by most of the Muslim migrants. In addition, traditional village governance lacks access to economic instruments, which weakens its capacity to tackle the economic roots of the conflict. Thus the traditional mechanisms of migrant ordinance , as practiced by the traditional village governance have not yet been successful in penetrating all aspects of the conflict. Finally, one of the main challenges for traditional village governance s legal development is the creation of a regional legal system capable of accommodating rapid changes in line with the national and international legal practices. The framing of the new laws should be responsive to the aspirations of a changing society. It should not only protect the various Balinese communities interests, but also that of other ethnic groups, especially those of the minority. In other words, the main challenge to traditional village governance is its ability to develop flexibility and inclusiveness.

The Politics of Pulp Investment and the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST)

The Politics of Pulp Investment and the Brazilian Landless Movement (MST) The paper industry has been moving more heavily to the global South at the beginning of the 21st century. In a number of cases the rural populations of the global South have engaged in increasingly important resistance in their scuffle with the large-scale tree plantation-relying pulp investment model. The resistance had generally not yet managed to slow down Southern industrial tree plantation expansion until 2004. After all, even the MST, perhaps the strongest of the Southern movements, has limited power in comparison to the corporations pushing for plantation expansion. This thesis shows how, even against these odds, depending on the mechanisms of contention and case-specific conflict dynamics, in some cases the movements have managed to slow and even reverse plantation expansion. The thesis is based on extensive field research in the Brazilian countryside. It outlines a new theory of contentious agency promotion, emphasizing its importance in the shaping of corporate resource exploitation. The thesis includes a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of resistance influence on the economic outcomes of all (14) Brazilian large-scale pulp projects between 2004-2008. The central hypothesis of the thesis is that corporate resource exploitation can be slowed down more effectively and likely when the resistance is based on contentious agency. Contentious agency is created by the concatenation of five mutually supporting mechanisms of contention: organizing and politicizing a social movement; heterodox framing of pulp projects; protesting; networking; and embedding whilst maintaining autonomy. The findings suggest that contentious agency can slow or even reverse the expansion of industrial plantations, whereas when contentious agency promotion was inactive, fast or even unchecked plantation expansion was always the outcome. The rule applied to all the assessed 14 pulp conflict cases. The hypothesis gained strong support even in situations where corporate agency promotion was simultaneously active. In previous studies on social movements, there has been a lack of contributions that help us understand the causal mechanisms of contention influencing economic outcomes. The thesis answers to the call by merging a Polanyian analysis of the political economy with the Dynamics of Contention research program and making a case for the impact of contentious agency on capital accumulation. The research concludes that an efficient social movement can utilize mechanisms of contention to promote the potential of activism among its members and influence investment outcomes. Protesting, for example via pioneering land occupations, seemed to be particularly important. Until now, there has been no comprehensive theory on when and how contentious agency can slow down or reverse the expansion of corporate resource exploitation. The original contribution of this research is to provide such a theory, and utilize it to offer an extensive explanation on the conflicts over pulp investment in Brazil, the globalization of the paper industry, and slowing of industrial plantation expansion in the global South.

Participation or further exclusion? : Contestations over forest conservation and control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania

This Ph.D. thesis Participation or Further Exclusion? Contestations over Forest Conservation and Control in the East Usambara Mountains, Tanzania describes and analyses the shift in the prevailing discourse of forest and biodiversity conservation policies and strategies towards more participatory approaches in Tanzania, and the changes in the practises of resource control. I explore the scope for and limits to the different actors and groups who are considered to form the community, to participate in resource control, in a specific historical and socio-economic context. I analyse whether, how and to which extent the targets of such participatory conservation interventions have been able to affect the formal rules and practices of resource control, and explore their different responses and discursive and other strategies in relation to conservation efforts. I approach the problematic through exploring certain participatory conservation interventions and related negotiations between the local farmers, government officials and the external actors in the case of two protected forest reserves in the southern part of the East Usambaras, Tanzania. The study area belongs to the Eastern Arc Mountains that are valued globally and nationally for their high level of biodiversity and number of endemic and near endemic species. The theoretical approach draws from theorising on power, participation and conservation in anthropology of development and post-structuralist political ecology. The material was collected in three stages between 2003 and 2008 by using an ethnographic approach. I interviewed and observed the actors and their resource use and control practices at the local level, including the representatives of the villagers living close to the protected forests and the conservation agency, but also followed the selected processes and engaged with the non-local agencies involved in the conservation efforts in the East Usambaras. In addition, the more recent processes of change and the actors strategies in resource control were contextualised against the social and environmental history of the study area and the evolvement of institutions of natural resource control. My findings indicate that the discourse of participation that has emerged in global conservation policy debate within the past three decades, and is being institutionalised in the national policies in many countries, including Tanzania, has shaped the practices of forest conservation in the East Usambaras, although in a fragmented and uneven way. Instrumental interpretation of participation, in which it is to serve the goals of improving the control of the forest and making it more acceptable and efficient, has prevailed among the governmental actors and conservation organisations. Yet, there is variation between the different projects and actors promoting participatory conservation regarding the goals and means of participation, e.g. to which extent the local people are to be involved in decision-making. The actors representing communities also have their diverse agendas, understandings and experiences regarding the rationality, outcomes and benefits of being involved in forest control, making the practices of control fluid. The elements of the exclusive conservation thinking and practices co-exist with the more recent participatory processes, and continue to shape the understandings and strategies of the actors involved in resource control. The ideas and narratives of the different discourses are reproduced and selectively used by the parties involved. The idea of forest conservation is not resisted as such by most of the actors at local level, quite the opposite. However, the strict regulations and rules governing access to resources, such as valuable timber species, continue to be disputed by many. Furthermore, the history of control, such as past injustices related to conservation and unfulfilled promises, undermines the participation of certain social groups in resource control and benefit sharing. This also creates controversies in the practices of conservation, and fuels conflicts regarding the establishment of new protected areas. In spite of this, the fact that the representatives of the communities have been invited to the arenas where information is shared, and principles and conditions of forest control and benefit sharing are discussed and partly decided upon, has created expectations among the participants, and opened up opportunities for some of the local actors to enhance their own, and sometimes wider interests in relation to resource control and the related benefits. The local actors experiences of the previous government and other interventions strongly affect how they position themselves in relation to conservation interventions, and their responses and strategies. However, my findings also suggest, in a similar way to research conducted in some other protected areas, that the benefits of participation in conservation and resource control tend to accrue unevenly between different groups of local people, e.g. due to unequal access to information and differences in their initial resources and social position.

The Population Consequences of Sex and Conflict

Natural selection generally operates at the level of the individual, or more specifically at the level of the gene. As a result, individual selection does not always favour traits which benefit the population or species as a whole. The spread of an individual gene may even act to the detriment of the organism in which it finds. Thus selection at the level of the individual can affect processes at the level of the organism, group or even at the level of the species. As most behaviours ultimately affect births, deaths and the distribution of individuals, it seems inevitable that behavioural decisions will have an impact on population dynamics and population densities. Behavioural decisions can often involve costs through allocation of energy into behavioural strategies, such as the investment into armaments involved in fighting over resources or increased mortality due to injury or increased predation risk. Similarly, behaviour may act o to benefit the population, in terms of higher survival and increased fecundity. Examples include increased investment through parental care, choosing a mate based on the nuptial gifts they may supply and choosing territories in the face of competition. Investigating the impact of behaviour on population ecology may seem like a trivial task, but it is likely to have important consequences at different levels. For example, antagonistic behaviour may occasionally become so extreme that it increases the risk of extinction, and such extinction risk may have important implications for conservation. As a corollary, any such behaviour may also act as a macroevolutionary force, weeding out populations with traits which, whilst beneficial to the individuals in the short term, ultimately result in population extinction. In this thesis, I examine how behaviours, specifically conflict and competition over a resource and aspects of behaviour involved in sexual selection, can affect population densities, and what the implications are for the evolution and ecology of the populations in question. It is found that both behaviours related to individual conflict and mating strategies can have an effect at the level of the population, but that various factors, such as a feedback between selection and population densities or macroevolution caused by species extinctions, may act to limit the intensity of conflicts that we observe in nature.

Legislating on biopiracy in Europe: too little, too late?

This Handbook considers the international struggle to provide for proper and just protection of Indigenous intellectual property. Leading scholars consider legal and policy controversies over Indigenous knowledge in the fields of international law, copyright law, trademark law, patent law, trade secrets law, and cultural heritage. This collection examines national developments in Indigenous intellectual property from around the world. As well as examining the historical origins of conflicts over Indigenous knowledge, the volume examines new challenges to Indigenous intellectual property from emerging developments in information technology, biotechnology, and climate change.

Microbe-induced activation of inflammatory cytokine response in human cells

Human body is in continuous contact with microbes. Although many microbes are harmless or beneficial for humans, pathogenic microbes possess a threat to wellbeing. Antimicrobial protection is provided by the immune system, which can be functionally divided into two parts, namely innate and adaptive immunity. The key players of the innate immunity are phagocytic white blood cells such as neutrophils, monocytes, macrophages and dendritic cells (DCs), which constantly monitor the blood and peripheral tissues. These cells are armed for rapid activation upon microbial contact since they express a variety of microbe-recognizing receptors. Macrophages and DCs also act as antigen presenting cells (APCs) and play an important role in the development of adaptive immunity. The development of adaptive immunity requires intimate cooperation between APCs and T lymphocytes and results in microbe-specific immune responses. Moreover, adaptive immunity generates immunological memory, which rapidly and efficiently protects the host from reinfection. Properly functioning immune system requires efficient communication between cells. Cytokines are proteins, which mediate intercellular communication together with direct cell-cell contacts. Immune cells produce inflammatory cytokines rapidly following microbial contact. Inflammatory cytokines modulate the development of local immune response by binding to cell surface receptors, which results in the activation of intracellular signalling and modulates target cell gene expression. One class of inflammatory cytokines chemokines has a major role in regulating cellular traffic. Locally produced inflammatory chemokines guide the recruitment of effector cells to the site of inflammation during microbial infection. In this study two key questions were addressed. First, the ability of pathogenic and non-pathogenic Gram-positive bacteria to activate inflammatory cytokine and chemokine production in different human APCs was compared. In these studies macrophages and DCs were stimulated with pathogenic Steptococcus pyogenes or non-pathogenic Lactobacillus rhamnosus. The second aim of this thesis work was to analyze the role of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the regulation of microbe-induced chemokine production. In these studies bacteria-stimulated macrophages and influenza A virus-infected lung epithelial cells were used as model systems. The results of this study show that although macrophages and DCs share several common antimicrobial functions, these cells have significantly distinct responses against pathogenic and non-pathogenic Gram-positive bacteria. Macrophages were activated in a nearly similar fashion by pathogenic S. pyogenes and non-pathogenic L. rhamnosus. Both bacteria induced the production of similar core set of inflammatory chemokines consisting of several CC-class chemokines and CXCL8. These chemokines attract monocytes, neutrophils, dendritic cells and T cells. Thus, the results suggest that bacteria-activated macrophages efficiently recruit other effector cells to the site of inflammation. Moreover, macrophages seem to be activated by all bacteria irrespective of their pathogenicity. DCs, in contrast, were efficiently activated only by pathogenic S. pyogenes, which induced DC maturation and production of several inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. In contrast, L. rhamnosus-stimulated DCs matured only partially and, most importantly, these cells did not produce inflammatory cytokines or chemokines. L. rhamnosus-stimulated DCs had a phenotype of "semi-mature" DCs and this type of DCs have been suggested to enhance tolerogenic adaptive immune responses. Since DCs have an essential role in the development of adaptive immune response the results suggest that, in contrast to macrophages, DCs may be able to discriminate between pathogenic and non-pathogenic bacteria and thus mount appropriate inflammatory or tolerogenic adaptive immune response depending on the microbe in question. The results of this study also show that pro-inflammatory cytokines can contribute to microbe-induced chemokine production at multiple levels. S. pyogenes-induced type I interferon (IFN) was found to enhance the production of certain inflammatory chemokines in macrophages during bacterial stimulation. Thus, bacteria-induced chemokine production is regulated by direct (microbe-induced) and indirect (pro-inflammatory cytokine-induced) mechanisms during inflammation. In epithelial cells IFN- and tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) were found to enhance the expression of PRRs and components of cellular signal transduction machinery. Pre-treatment of epithelial cells with these cytokines prior to virus infection resulted in markedly enhanced chemokine response compared to untreated cells. In conclusion, the results obtained from this study show that pro-inflammatory cytokines can enhance microbe-induced chemokine production during microbial infection by providing a positive feedback loop. In addition, pro-inflammatory cytokines can render normally low-responding cells to high chemokine producers via enhancement of microbial detection and signal transduction.