The production of three cytokines, interferon gamma (IFN-y), interleukin 10 (1L-10) and interleukin 12 (IL-12), was measured after intraperitoneal infection of immunocompetent Balb/c mice and immunodeficient SCID mice with the microsporidian, Encephalitozoon cuniculi Levaditi, Nicolau ct Schoen, 1923. High levels of IFN-y were detected in ex vivo cultures of peritoneal exudate cells (PEC) of Balb/c mice, a lower, but earlier IFN-y response was observed in PEC from SCID mice. The early 1L-10 response was detected in ex vivo cultures of splenocytes from Balb/c but not from SCID mice, explaining a delay in the IFN-y response in Balb/c mice. IL-12 was detected in PEC cultures from SCID mice, indicating an alternative pathway of IFN-y production by NK. cells stimulated by IL-12 derived from macrophages.
This article aims to compare two aspects of the education systems in two East European countries. As the political history of the Czech Republic and Poland in the past fifty years is similar, the authors compare the countries' development in tackling educational inequalities and attempt to evaluate their policies and reforms from the beginning of socialism to date. Despite many similarities and identical outcomes in the past (no effect in lowering levels of educational inequalities), these countries undertook two different approaches to the transformation of higher education after 1989. The specific current developments in higher education in the Czech Republic and Poland have been caused by conservative and reserved legislation in the former and the creation of new, very liberal rules for establishing non-state higher education institutions in the latter. As there emerged a considerable difference in the number of higher education institutions in each country, the authors show the negative impact on educational inequalities and the social consequences of the enormous increase in the number of students and private universities. Despite different approaches, the countries face many similar problems, such as quality assurance, a shortage of staff, and information asymmetry. These problems seem to be sharper in Poland, but it is only a matter of time for the Czech Republic.
This article makes a plea for a more explicitly intentional and political-strategic analysis of post-communist public policy pathways. The author analyses a set of social and labour-market policies implemented in the Czech Republic (pro-active job loss prevention) compared to Hungary and Poland (large-scale non-elderly retirement), and indicates why, far from being fully constrained by structural or external variables or by international pressures, political elites were able to design policy packages that served to reduce anti-reform protests. Once enacted at a formative historical turning point, these early policies fundamentally reshaped the subsequent operational space of post-communist politics throughout the 1990s. They crystallised the distinct pathways of post-communist welfare regimes, and they enabled early, and irreversible, democratic and market reform progress. While seemingly inefficient, and definitely costly in public-fi-nance terms, these policy packages contained a degree of political rationality, as they contributed to the making of the great Czech, Hungarian, and Polish transition success stories, in an otherwise highly heterogeneous population of postcommunist transition cases.
The article describes Czech women's civic organising focused on gender equality and women's rights since the Second World War and explains its character and development in the context of a) the state socialist regime, b) the impact of foreign and international donors on Czech women's civic organising during the socio-economic and political transformation of the first part of the 1990s, and c) the current process of the formalisation of Czech women's civic groups brought about by the Czech Republic's preparation for EU accession. The formalisation of women's civic groups is a process that consists of project-orien-tation, reform-orientation and the professionalisation of women's civic groups. In the era when the funding of women's civic groups has changed (as a result of EU Eastern enlargement) and the range of national political actors engaged in promoting gender equality has broadened (owing to pressure from the EU), these processes have brought about a shifts in the topics, activities, partnerships and strategies of Czech women's civic groups. These processes have contributed on the one hand to the marginalisation of those topics, activities and strategies previously addressed by some of Czech women's civic groups that do not fit in with the mainstream topics, activities and strategies defined by the EU (and by the EU influenced state). At the same time, however, some channels for having an impact on national decision-making processes have opened up to specific women's civic groups. EU Eastern enlargement paradoxically led to the orientation of women's civic groups towards national rather than supranational lobbying.