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When the pin is full, close the pin and set it aside. I would say make about 100 for an adult bracelet. You may need more or less depending on the size of your wrist.
Once you have all your pins put together, take the pliers and pinch the safety pin closed so it won't accidentally come open while you're wearing it.
**If you do it this way, make sure to measure the inside of the elastic... not the outside... It makes a big difference.
Thread your elastic through the top and bottom holes of the safety pins, laying the pins in opposite directions but keeping the beads on the outside. I noticed that some of the top holes of the safety pins were too small/bent so I couldn't get the thread through. You won't be able to use these, so either check before putting the beads on, or take the beads off and use another pin that will work. Make sure to set the defective ones aside so you don't keep having to fix pins.


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subset: commoncrawl


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EIN Presswire | Newsmatics
Vampire Penguin Has a Merchandise Shop
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Michael Graham Richard
December 13, 2011
Life-Cycle Analysis Comparison of Different Transportation ModesA new study by the European Cyclists Federation (ECF) looked at the CO2 impact of biking, driving cars, taking the bus, and found - not too surprisingly, but it's good to have the hard data to back up any claims - that if the countries of the EU-27 reached a level of biking similar to Denmark's, that reductions of CO2 emissions of between 63 and 142 million tonnes per year could be possible by 2050. This would be 12 to 26% of the target reduction set for the transport sector by the European 2050 targets.
This isn't some pipe dream. 2050 is far enough in the future that there's time to make infrastructure investments to bring up the level of "bike-friendliness" in cities where it is lagging, and it's long enough for smart incentives to work their magic and discourage car usage (especially in cities and for commuting).
As you can see in the picture above, bike LCA came to 21g of CO2 per kilometer, electric-assist bikes were 22g, buses scored 101g of CO2/km, and passenger cars got an average of 271g CO2/km (and that's just for short trips that could be replaced by bikes, which is what the study focused on).
A Conservative EstimateAnother thing to keep in mind when looking at the pictures in this post and in reading the numbers in the study (PDF) is that the ECF has been extremely conservative in its estimates, trying to avoid any accusations of being biased in favor of bikes. They went as far as not including infrastructure for cars, or things like parking and maintenance, in their calculations. This means that with a more realistic set of assumptions, bikes would come even more ahead.
Another thing of note in the study is the part where they discuss the life-cycle impact of cars (page 12 of the study). They found that 77% of the impact came from what they call 'tank to wheels', or the burning of the fuel. This means that fuel efficiency makes a big difference; while it isn't nearly as green as biking, if you have to drive a car, make sure it is the most fuel-efficient model that fits your needs and drive it sanely to keep MPG as high as possible.
Via ECF (pdf), BikePortland
Source: treehugger
Related articles:
Sustainability.org.il > תחבורת אופניים >


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A 41-year-old Surrey man is facing a slew of charges after he allegedly disarmed a Mountie of his "energy weapon" and shot himself in the leg.
In a news release issued Monday, police say two Surrey RCMP officers conducted a traffic stop and impaired driving investigation near 24 Avenue and 184 Street at approximately 8:50 p.m., Feb. 2.
According to police, the driver exited his vehicle and "allegedly began fighting aggressively" and attempted to remove the officers' firearms from their holsters.
"The man was able to gain access to one of the officers' Conductive Energy Weapon (CEW), discharging it into his own leg and the officer's foot," the release states. When the officers called for backup, both Surrey and Langley RCMP responded.
The suspect was taken into police custody after his release from hospital.
Both police officers sustained injuries and were treated in hospital, the release notes.
The suspect was arrested on two counts of assaulting a peace officer with a weapon, two counts of assault with intent to resist arrest, three counts of disarming a peace officer, one count of resist arrest, and counts for impaired operation of a conveyance, and fail or refuse to provide sample.
Const. Richard Wright said the incident highlights the risks involved when officers interact with individuals about whom they may have limited information.
"This incident serves as an example of how quickly a situation can change for police, especially when a suspected intoxicated individual is involved," Wright said.


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New aluminium battery for smartphones can be charged in a minute
U.S. scientists said they have invented a cheap, long-lasting and flexible battery made of aluminium for use in smartphones that can be charged in as little as one minute.
U.S. scientists said they have invented a cheap, long-lasting and flexible battery made of aluminium for use in smartphones that can be charged in as little as one minute.
The researchers, who detailed their discovery in the journal Nature, said the new aluminium-ion battery has the potential to replace lithium-ion batteries, used in millions of laptops and mobile phones.
Besides recharging much faster, the new aluminium battery is safer than existing lithium-ion batteries, which occasionally burst into flames, they added.
Researchers have long tried but failed to develop a battery made of aluminium, a lightweight and relatively inexpensive metal that has high charging capacity.
A team lead by chemistry professor Hongjie Dai at Stanford University in California made a breakthrough by accidentally discovering that graphite made a good partner to aluminium, Stanford said in a statement.
In a prototype, aluminium was used to make the negatively-charged anode while graphite provided material for the positively charged cathode.
A prototype aluminium battery recharged in one minute, the scientists said.
'Lithium-ion batteries can be a fire hazard,' said Dai. 'Our new battery won't catch fire, even if you drill through it.'
The new battery is also very durable and flexible, the scientists said.
While lithium-ion batteries last about 1,000 cycles, the new aluminium battery was able to continue after more than 7,500 cycles without loss of capacity. It also can be bent or folded.
Larger aluminium batteries could also be used to store renewable energy on the electrical grid, Dai said.
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How Scientists Created A Typhus Vaccine In A 'Fantastic Laboratory'
How Scientists Created A Typhus Vaccine In A 'Fantastic Laboratory'
Writer Arthur Allen describes how a WWII scientist in Poland smuggled the typhus vaccine to Jews — while his team made a weakened version for the Nazis. Originally broadcast July 22, 2014.
Hear The Original Interview
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Today, writer Arthur Allen has a remarkable story of war, disease, heroism and vaccines made from volunteers willing to let lice suck their blood. For centuries, epidemics of typhus have erupted in times of war. The disease is carried by body lice, which thrive among soldiers who go long stretches without changing clothes and then transmit the vermin to civilian populations they encounter. During World War II, typhus appeared in war-torn areas and in Jewish ghettos, where cramped, harsh conditions were a perfect breeding ground for lice.
Arthur Allen's book, which is out in paperback next month, tells the story of two scientists, one Christian and one Jewish, who are employed by the Nazis to produce a typhus vaccine to protect German troops. The labs of these two immunologists actually sent weakened, ineffective vaccines to the German army while smuggling the real product to Jews in a Polish ghetto and a concentration camp. One lab sheltered Polish intellectuals and resistance fighters from the Nazis by employing them as lice feeders - meaning they allowed hundreds of lice to suck their blood. Arthur Allen has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Science and other publications. I spoke to him last year when his book first appeared in hardback. It's called "The Fantastic Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl."
DAVIES: Arthur Allen, welcome to FRESH AIR. Let's start by just talking about the disease typhus. Now, this is distinct from typhoid fever. That's completely different. Tell us about typhus. What were the symptoms of the disease - how it affected its victims?
ARTHUR ALLEN: Typhus would begin with a terrible headache and back pains leading to fever, vomiting, nausea, diarrhea. And you'd - around the time the fever began, there would be a rash that often broke out on the abdomen that was described as looking like little, red jewels. It was a petechial rash. And eventually you would have deafness, you know, terrible, hysterical fits of laughter and tears. And sometimes suicides would happen when people jumped out of their beds and jumped through windows or ran down stairs. And sometimes the long-term effects could include things like loss of limbs. People were known to have, you know, lose toes and fingers or a penis.
DAVIES: From gangrene, right?
ALLEN: From gangrene, yeah.
DAVIES: What was the mortality? How often did people die from the disease?
ALLEN: Well, it varied quite a bit. But in general, it was about 20 percent. But what happened was that young children, for some reason, rarely died of it. But if you were 50 or older, you were very likely to die - more like a 50 percent or more chance of it.
DAVIES: And tell us how typhus is spread and what conditions create a typhus epidemic.
ALLEN: So back in the day when everyone was carrying lice and they were as much a part of our armature as our clothes, typhus could happen in a number of different places where people were wearing their clothes and didn't change them. And that could be in - that was in England and the United States and many countries. But basically, in the - when you look at the sort of - starting in the late 19th century, early 20th century, when people start bathing, it became a disease that was really associated only with these very extreme situations of war - concentration camps, barracks, ghettos, places where people really didn't have running water, didn't have access to changes of clothes. And then it spread, you know, very quickly in these kind of environments - mostly in northern climes.
DAVIES: And body lice are distinct from head lice, right?
ALLEN: Right. I mean, the strange thing is that body and head lice are very similar anatomically, genetically. But there's some subtle differences. And head lice prefer a temperature that body lice can't stand. And so they only live in hair, whereas body lice live in clothing around your body.
DAVIES: So give us a sense of the scale of typhus epidemics in, you know, in history, particularly in around the turn-of-the-century and in World War II - and in World War I.
ALLEN: So in World War I, you had a terrible typhus epidemic in the Balkans that began in the Austrian army, which probably picked it up from civilians in Serbia. And then the Russians - typhus was always endemic to Russia. And Russian soldiers brought it to the Eastern Front. The Germans managed to keep it pretty much out of their forces through de-licing and other measures. But then following World War I, when there was this terrible chaos all over the Eastern Front after Lenin pulled his troops from the Eastern Front, and Russian soldiers were roaming through all parts of Russia - what's now Russia, Ukraine, Belarus - and there were POWs in Poland. And the disease just spread like wildfire through that entire region. There have been estimates of as many as 20 million cases of typhus and, you know, 3, 4, 5 million deaths. Nobody knows; the records are terrible. But the reports of eyewitnesses from that time are just staggering and hard to even fathom.
DAVIES: So as World War I ends, it's understood that body lice transmit the disease. But there's no vaccine. And that brings us to the central character of your book, Rudolf Weigl. Tell us a little bit about him.
ALLEN: So Weigl was actually an ethnic German, born in what's now the Czech Republic. His parents were both, you know, ethnic Germans. In this time, you know, there were different ethnicities spread around the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But his father was an inventor and had invented one of these large-wheeled bicycles. And he fell off one of his inventions and killed himself. And his - Weigl's mother remarried a Polish schoolteacher, and they were very tight. And Weigl identified himself always as a Pole. And he studied in Lwow, which is now Lviv - studied zoology and started developing this expertise as a - initially as an entomologist and then as a typhus expert.
DAVIES: Right so - and he was in the city now called Lviv, which is in this area of Galicia, which was in eastern Poland between World War I and World War II. He was an army doctor, I guess, during World War I and then set up a lab because he wanted to study lice. When Rudolf Weigl wanted to study lice, he had a problem, which is that lice, once that - they are themselves become carriers of typhus, the disease kills the lice themselves. And so he needed a way to get a supply of infected lice. He had a fascinating solution to this problem. Tell us about that.
ALLEN: So bacterial diseases in those days were usually cultured in sort of broths, but you couldn't grow typhus germs that way. And the only animals that carried typhus were humans and lice. So Rudolf Weigl figured out that what he needed to do was to learn how to grow typhus in lice but in a controlled way. And he was a terribly clever sort of technical wizard who could invent all kinds of little machines. Some of the microscope devices that we use today where - he invented, like, a secondary focus knob on a microscope. And he invented a way to inject a tiny droplet of typhus, sort of a slurry of typhus germs, into a louse through its anus using a tiny sort of micropipette that he would draw out - a glass pipette that he drew out in a Bunsen burner - and he was able to demonstrate that he could inject the germs into an individual louse this way while looking at the louse and the pipette under a microscope.
DAVIES: Yeah. So some people will infect guinea pigs or mice. This is a guy looking through a microscope at an individual louse...
ALLEN: Right.
DAVIES: ...And injecting it with the typhus. And he does this again and again and again to create an infected colony that he can study.
ALLEN: Right. And there's - that's the only way to do it because lice don't spread it amongst themselves. They only spread it by picking it up from a human, so he had to inject it into each of these lice. And eventually he devised these machines which would use a sort of hydraulic pump that you stepped on while you were looking at the louse under a microscope, and it would inject, you know, a droplet into a louse. And you could go down a row of lice that he would set up in a clamp, with their little louse butts in the air, and inject the typhus germs into each of, like, 50 lice in a row. It's just sort of an amazing contraption, and I admit the whole idea's very surprising.
DAVIES: And it gets weirder as we proceed. But he faced another problem - in order to maintain this colony of lice, he had to feed them.
ALLEN: Right. So the way to feed lice is to give them humans to feed on. And he developed these little sort of matchbox-sized cages. He would put the lice into the cage and put a sort of a little screen over the cage that was wide enough mesh for the louse to stick its little needle through but narrow enough so the louse couldn't escape. And people would strap a number of these cages to their legs with a rubber band and feed - the lice would feed on their blood for about an hour. If you let lice feed for more than an hour, apparently they blow up. So you don't want to do that. But this is how he would keep this colony alive.
DAVIES: Now, in the course of doing this he had to make sure that he wasn't engaging healthy humans to feed lice which had typhus. But that could happen because he did have typhus-infected lice. He himself became infected at some point. Tell us about his experience with the disease.
ALLEN: So at this time, it was very difficult for scientists to know what kind of bacteria they were working with. And Weigl was intent on proving that he was growing typhus in the lice. And an opportunity to prove this once and for all happened when he accidentally infected himself with some solution of typhus solution in the lab, and he became ill with typhus. And even though he was delirious and raving, like people often are when they have typhus, he instructed his wife to put boxes of lice on him that had not been infected with typhus. These were clean lice, so to speak. And they became infected with typhus. And this was another sort of brick in the wall of evidence he was building that he was able - that he indeed had typhus growing in these lice colonies. And, you know, there were a number of accidents in his lab where people would get sick. A couple of very famous scientists died experimenting with typhus there. It was not an easy bacteria to work with in a laboratory.
DAVIES: Arthur Allen's book is "The Fantastic Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl." We'll hear more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: We're listening to my interview recorded last year with Arthur Allen. His book, "The Strange Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl," is out in paperback next month.
DAVIES: So this is the period between the world wars - in the 1930's really - and word gets out that Weigl is making progress towards a typhus vaccine. And what's fascinating is that the way one - the way he would produce the vaccine in the lab was this very painstaking process of growing this colony of infected lice and then harvesting the disease and pulling out the proteins. You want to just describe how that happened?
ALLEN: Right, so it would start by injecting typhus solution into these lice serially. He'd put them in something that became known as the Weigl clamp, which held the little lice in place while they were injected with this hydraulic pump, which pumped a little bit of typhus juice into them. Then they would feed on people. And then after about five days, they would be taken and dissected individually. They had to pull the louse gut, which is where all of the typhus germs grew, pull it out under a microscope, put it in a little pot, and then that would be ground up and basically killed - the typhus germs were killed with formalin or some other chemical solution. And that was the vaccine. But it involved, you know, first injecting these lice, then having them grow in these matchbox-sized cages on people's legs, then pulling them out, taking out the guts and then beginning the whole process all over again.
DAVIES: So thousands and thousands of lice had to be...
ALLEN: Millions of lice.
DAVIES: So millions of lice had to be injected with this stuff by somebody pumping them full of the typhus vaccine. Once they died, taking their guts out very carefully, again each of them done under a microscope by somebody, and then the vaccine was created.
ALLEN: Right.
DAVIES: Wow.
ALLEN: Yeah, it was an amazing process and very labor-intensive.
DAVIES: So Rudolf Weigl develops this lab, begins growing lice by the millions, having them feed on humans who strap little cages of lice to their legs, and then a vaccine is developed. And then war comes. Poland is invaded by Germany in 1939, and the city he's in - now known as Lviv - is at first occupied by the Soviets because there was the, you know, the Hitler-Stalin Pact and then eventually the Nazis, as the Nazis then invaded Russia. Tell us how Weigl himself considered the question of whether to work for the Germans.
ALLEN: Well, I think that Weigl was a very perceptive guy, and he saw that the Nazis were going to invade. And by the time the Nazi invasion occurred, he was looking for the best way to deal with the situation. And he, you know, considered fleeing. He considered suicide. And he decided that he would keep running the lab and - and it's - it's a little - we don't - I don't have - there are no diaries that show exactly what he was thinking, but he turned out to have developed a relationship, probably by mail, with a German army commander named Eyer, who had been stationed in Krakow and was making a vaccine from 1939 to '41 that was very similar to Weigl's.
It followed Weigl's recipe. And so when Eyer came to Lviv and Weigl saw that he could work under Eyer, and that he would be able to run the laboratory the way he wanted to and to hire all of the people he knew from Lviv University and their students and other people who were in desperate need of help, he decided to keep it open. And this would cost him - you know, in the future, he would be called a collaborator, but he made the best of a bad situation. He decided that all of these people in Lviv were in danger of being killed. The Nazis killed intellectuals. The Nazis killed anyone who was educated and represented another culture. And - so Weigl made this very difficult decision that he would make this vaccine for the German Wehrmacht, the German army, but he would do so on his own terms.
DAVIES: That's a fascinating part of the story because we have a situation where Weigl has this laboratory open, and it's a labor-intensive process. He needs a lot of people to feed the lice. He needs people to dissect the infected lice to create the vaccine. Tell us about what kind of people he employed in the lab and what they did.
ALLEN: Well, during the interwar period, all the intellectual life in Lviv was in the cafes. Well, the cafes were all closed during the Nazi occupation, or only Nazis went there, or collaborators. And all of the intellectual life basically migrated to Weigl's laboratory. And people would go in there - there were mathematicians, tables full of mathematicians, who would be doing their work as mathematicians while lice fed on their blood in these cages. There were geographers, poets, all kinds of biologists, you know, every kind of walk of life. But particular - in particular there were many university professors and students who worked there. There were also people from the Polish Underground who worked there. It was a perfect cover to be an underground organizer because you had this pass that said Typhus Institute on it. You showed that to a Nazi SS person and on the one hand, they were terrified anyone having to do with this Typhus Institute could be infected with typhus. It was dirty. It was associated with Jews, and lice and typhus. And on the other hand, they were told not to bother these people because they were making a product that was key to the German health defense.
DAVIES: So there was this typhus epidemic raging in the Jewish ghetto in Lviv. And you write that at least 30,000 doses of Weigl's vaccine actually found their way into people in that community. How did that happen?
ALLEN: Well, it was smuggled in various ways. But one method that Weigl had for doing this was to tell his bosses that they needed to do some experimental work in the - with the vaccine to make sure that it was up to snuff, that it was working well. And so this would be a pretense for bringing it into the ghetto and vaccinating people. So this went on throughout the war. And there were also thefts of the vaccine and a black market in it. It was one of the most valuable black market commodities because it was thought as being one of the only ways you could save yourself from typhus in the ghetto. A single, you know, dose of Weigl's vaccine could be worth as much as a month's wages or more.
DAVIES: So while Weigl kept his lab open, he made sure to employ persecuted groups such as intellectuals as well as members of the Polish Underground in his lab working as feeders. And he also made sure that thousands of doses got to the Jewish community in the city. Now, he was - he was employed to produce a vaccine for the German army. Did he? Did he give them vaccine that would work to...
ALLEN: Yes.
DAVIES: ...To help inoculate German soldiers?
ALLEN: Yes, he did. And I mean, his boss, Hermann Eyer, estimated after the war that he might have saved the lives of 10,000 German soldiers. And there was a certain amount of sabotage that went on in the lab where the doses of the vaccine that were headed for the Eastern Front were sometimes weakened or they would use fewer louse guts to make them, which made them weaker. But in general, I mean, this was legitimate vaccine that did go to protect their enemies. And, you know, this is a conundrum and a paradox that's unavoidable.
DAVIES: And just to clarify, you said that some of the vaccine that was sent to the German army was weakened. Was that Weigl's policy or was that done by others there...
ALLEN: Well...
DAVIES: ...Or is it not clear?
ALLEN: ...Weigl was this perfectionist who was always thinking about his vaccine. And in a way, he - you know, he wasn't always focused on the current situation, but his associates were. And they looked the other way or were actively involved in a lot of sabotage of the vaccine. Weigl himself was involved in the smuggling operations of getting it to Jewish ghettos and to resistance fighters. But in terms of weakening his vaccine, it's not clear that he would've wanted to do that, even as paradoxical as that is.
DAVIES: Arthur Allen's book, "The Strange Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl," is out in paperback next month. We'll hear more of him after a break and remember Texas fiddler Johnny Gimble. I'm Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. We're listening to my interview recorded last year with Arthur Allen, author of the book "The Fantastic Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus And Sabotaged The Nazis." It's out in paperback next month. Typhus was spread by body lice. And during World War II, epidemics were killing Germany soldiers as well as civilians in war-torn areas, especially Jews in crowded ghettos. The two scientists Arthur Allen writes about were called on by the Nazis to produce typhus vaccines to protect German soldiers, but the scientists found ways to secretly help Jews and resistance fighters while undermining the Nazi war effort.
DAVIES: Now, there was a young Jewish student, an assistant to Dr. Weigl, Ludwik Fleck. He was working at a hospital in the ghetto and managed to survive. What - how did he find a way out of this?
ALLEN: Well, he partly survived because of the help of Rudolf Weigl. Rudolf Weigl gave doctors like Fleck - and several - probably a dozen people who worked with him as well as other Jewish doctors in the city - these passes that showed that they were employees of his institute, even though they actually weren't directly working there in most cases. But they had these IDs and those provided a special protection. And Fleck developed his own vaccine while working in the Jewish ghetto laboratory. He made it out of urine of all things. He discovered that when typhus patients were at a certain period of the disease, their urine contained pieces of, you know, typhus proteins that he believed could be protective if they were made into a vaccine. And they got the attention of some of the German medical authorities who became interested because they thought perhaps this vaccine could be used by the Germans.
And so Fleck was brought in to the Gestapo headquarters. He went before some German doctors. He was asked if his vaccine could work for the Germans. And he said, well, of course, if you used German urine you could. And he was either making a - I guess he wasn't making a joke 'cause he knew that they - that they wouldn't get it, that this was, you know, a crude joke about their racial idiocy. But they nodded their heads, and they said OK. So he could continue making his vaccine with, you know, Jewish urine. And if it worked, why, they could use the same technique to make one with German urine and it would work. And so he ended up working in the ghetto for about a year and then Himmler decided that he wanted to bring Jewish scientists from around Europe to the concentration camps to work in laboratories there.
DAVIES: So he eventually goes to Buchenwald and there works on developing a typhus vaccine. But I'd like to you talk a bit about what he and his family witnessed among the other concentration camp inmates and in particular what some of the Nazi scientists around them were doing.
ALLEN: Well, at Auschwitz, he was in the lab next to the laboratory where they were doing mass sterilization experiments on women. They - he knew who Mengele was and saw the experiments he was doing with twins that were just hideous. And at Buchenwald, he was in a laboratory that was part of a complex that was doing highly unethical, immoral experiments with typhus. And this actually became one of the bases for the Nuremberg Code in medicine. And what they were doing is they were giving people typhus intentionally and using their blood to inject other people with typhus. And they would first vaccinate them with a whole series of different vaccines that they were trying to develop for the use of the German military. But in the meantime, they were doing these experiments that were not only unethical, they were completely useless. They really didn't yield any - any good information.
DAVIES: So at Buchenwald, Fleck eventually works on a typhus vaccine. His technique is different from - from the one that Dr. Weigl used, where he would grow colonies of lice. Fleck used a way of infecting rabbits and collecting tissue there. But did he actually give the German army a usable vaccine? And did he help others in the camp?
ALLEN: When Fleck got to Buchenwald, this fellow Erwin Ding, who was intent on becoming a university professor.
DAVIES: He's the SS doctor who...
ALLEN: He was the...
DAVIES: ...Ambitious guy.
ALLEN: Very ambitious, very stupid guy - had been told to make a vaccine in rabbit lungs using a French technique that was developed at the Pasteur Institute. So he gathered a bunch of people together who included a pastry cook, a couple of doctors, a physicist, a politician. None of them had any clue how to make a vaccine. And he said OK, make this vaccine. So everybody wanted to make the vaccine. He wanted it for his career. They wanted it to avoid being murdered. And Fleck arrived a short period after they'd begun. And he said, hey, this stuff you're growing in the rabbit lungs is not typhus germs. It's some other bacteria. And they said to him let's not tell them. And he said OK. And so they went on for about 16 months making this vaccine, very serious, kept a straight face the whole time.
This was this wonderful vaccine that the wonderful SS man, Ding, was developing for the German army, and it was a useless vaccine. There was no typhus antigen in it. But about halfway through that process, they did learn how to make a real vaccine. But they were only able to make much smaller amounts of it. And they used this vaccine to vaccinate people in the camp who were most likely to be exposed to typhus, you know, inmates and people working in the typhus laboratory and so on. And this charade went on for a year and a half. And it - no one ever discovered any - even after the war it's not clear how many people knew about it because they gave this vaccine to the German officers who were on trial at Nuremberg. And they thought they'd been vaccinated with a good vaccine. And they would say, see, we were making a wonderful vaccine, even at Buchenwald, this horrible concentration camp. But we made this wonderful vaccine. And then at this trial, some of the inmates testified, no, that was a fake vaccine. And of course the German officers were shocked at the dishonesty of the inmates.
DAVIES: And they never figured out that the vaccine that they thought they were giving to troops didn't protect them from typhus?
ALLEN: Right. And this has something to do with the fact that vaccines are never perfect. So let's say you vaccinate a group of soldiers - 100 soldiers, and 12 of them get typhus. Well, it's very plausible that it was a decent vaccine, but it didn't work perfectly. And maybe more of them got typhus until you became a little suspicious. And so you'd send back the news to the Germans in Berlin. And they would send down to Buchenwald and say, hey, what's going on with this vaccine. It's not working. So then the inmates would put together some of the good vaccine, send that up to Berlin, say, oh, this is the lot that they were vaccinated from. And they tested, and sure enough it was a good vaccine.
DAVIES: Arthur Allen's book is "The Fantastic Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus And Sabotaged The Nazis." We'll continue our conversation after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
DAVIES: We're listening to our interview recorded last year with Arthur Allen. His book, "The Strange Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl," is out in paperback next month.
DAVIES: After the war, there was a lot of fury against those perceived as having cooperated with the Nazis. What happened to Dr. Weigl after the war?
ALLEN: Well, unfortunately, his fate was very sad. He went to Krakow because all of the Poles who lived in Lviv were basically deported or forced to leave one way or another. He ended up in Krakow. The Krakow establishment was mistrustful of him. The Soviets distrusted him. Actually, they tried to get him to go to Moscow to make a vaccine for them there. He wouldn't go. He fell afoul of a very ambitious typhus expert who had nowhere near the expertise that he had but was in with the system. And basically, although he wasn't, you know, imprisoned, he was shunned and made to do things that someone of his age and expertise really should never have had to undergo. He was never, for example, admitted to the Polish Academy of Sciences. And he died basically unknown, unrecognized in 1957.
DAVIES: And the steps he had taken to get vaccine to the Jews in the ghetto and to save members of the intelligentsia and the Polish resistance, that was never known or credited?
ALLEN: It was really ignored throughout his life, and even into the '80s, there would be occasional sort of remarks about him in the press or in articles that he had been a, you know, collaborator. It wasn't until after the fall of the Soviet Union that his reputation was rehabilitated. Some of the people who had worked with him in the United States - who had gone to the United States or were still in Poland, began to sort of write articles. There were some articles in the Polish press. And then eventually, word got to, for example, the Israeli authorities. And Yad Vashem, which isn't always recognized, you know, Gentiles who did work to protect Jews during the Holocaust, gave him recognition. You know, belatedly, in 2003, he was named as a Righteous Among Nations.
DAVIES: And that was, of course, long after his death.
ALLEN: Long after.
DAVIES: And what about Ludwik Fleck?
ALLEN: Well, the interesting thing about Fleck is his paper trail sort of indicates that he wanted to go to the United States after the war, or maybe Israel. His son, actually, was on the Exodus, the famous ship that brought Jews to Israel in 1948. So his son was in Israel, but Fleck and his wife remained in Poland. He continued to work as a scientist, first in the city of Lublin and then in Warsaw. There was anti-Semitism, but he kind of brushed it off. And then, in '57, he decided he was ill. And perhaps anti-Semitism played a role in this, but also his friends in Israel got him a job. And he left with his wife and went to Israel, remained there for about four years and died in 1961.
DAVIES: Isn't typhus pretty much gone?
ALLEN: Well, lice carry other diseases. I'm not sure a lot of science has been done with these lice, but lice also carry diseases that are still around. Although, the main thing is now there aren't many people who are lousy, especially in the areas where there are lice. But there's research to be done. And also, I have thought a couple of times during these last several months in Ukraine that, you know, it's possible that we could have typhus again. It would never be as bad as it was before because you just - it can be handled quite well with antibiotics. But people who have had typhus, it's possible for the disease to remain dormant in them. And if they become lousy again, they can spread the disease.
This used to happen in the Lower East Side with immigrants who'd come from Russia. And late in life, their immune systems would fade, and these dormant infections would come back to life. And they would get what was essentially typhus again. And this actually answers the mystery of how typhus remains alive because you figure when the people die and the lice die, then there's no more typhus. But it turns out certain people, when they get typhus, remain as reservoirs of the disease, sort of like typhoid Marys. And if they ever become lousy again, they could spread it again. And hopefully things won't get to that point in Ukraine.
DAVIES: And we don't see it today mostly because hygiene has improved, people change their clothes?
ALLEN: Right. And the initial way that typhus was basically - quickly became a nonissue in global health was DDT. It was used first to fight a typhus epidemic in Naples in 1943. And then it was used in the concentration camps to end typhus epidemics that were happening there when the Allied armies came in. And then it was used, you know, throughout North Africa and Eastern Europe. And antibiotics can control a particular case of typhus - can, you know, treat - it could be used to treat it. And so - but the main thing is, yeah, people aren't lousy anymore.
DAVIES: Well, Arthur Allen, thanks so much for speaking with us.
ALLEN: Thank you so much for having me on.
DAVIES: I spoke to Arthur Allen last year. His book, "The Strange Laboratory Of Dr. Weigl," is out in paperback next month. Coming up, we remember Texas fiddler Johnny Gimble who died last month. This is FRESH AIR.
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A Prehistory of Southeastern Europe
By one interpretation of the historiography criterion, Southeastern Europe enters protohistory only with Homer. At any rate, the period ends before Herodotus in the 5th century BCE.
Curated/Reviewed by Matthew A. McIntosh
Public Historian
The prehistory of Southeastern Europe, defined roughly as the territory of the wider Balkan peninsula (including the territories of the modern countries of Albania, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Macedonia, Greece, Bosnia, Romania, Bulgaria, and European Turkey) covers the period from the Upper Paleolithic, beginning with the presence of Homo sapiens in the area some 44,000 years ago, until the appearance of the first written records in Classical Antiquity, in Greece as early as the 8th century BC.
Human prehistory in Southeastern Europe is conventionally divided into smaller periods, such as Upper Paleolithic, HoloceneMesolithic/Epipaleolithic, Neolithic Revolution, expansion of Proto-Indo-Europeans, and Protohistory. The changes between these are gradual. For example, depending on interpretation, protohistory might or might not include Bronze Age Greece (2800–1200 BC),[1] Minoan, Mycenaean, Thracian and Venetic cultures. By one interpretation of the historiography criterion, Southeastern Europe enters protohistory only with Homer. At any rate, the period ends before Herodotus in the 5th century BC.[2]
Paleolithic, 2,600,000 – 13,000 BP
Balkan Transition to the Upper Paleolithic, 2,600,000 – 50,000 BP
The earliest evidence of human occupation discovered in the Balkans, in Kozarnika Bulgaria, date from at least 1.4 million years ago.[3]
There is evidence of human presence in the Balkans from the Lower Paleolithic onwards, but the number of sites is limited. According to Douglass W. Bailey:[4]
it is important to recognize that the Balkan Upper Palaeolithic was a long period containing little significant internal change. Thus, the Balkans transition was not as dramatic as in other European regions. Crucial changes that define the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens are presented at Bacho Kiro at 44,000 BC. The Bulgarian key Palaeolithic caves named Bacho Kiro and Temnata Dupka with early Upper Palaeolithic material correlate that the transition was gradual.
The Palaeolithic period, literally the "Old Stone Age", is an ancient cultural level of human development characterized by the use of unpolished chipped stone tools. The transition from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is directly related to the development of behavioural modernity by hominids around 40,000 years BP. To denote the great significance and degree of change, this dramatic shift from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is sometimes called the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution.
In the late Pleistocene, various components of the transition–material culture and environmental features (climate, flora, and fauna) indicate continual change, differing from contemporary points in other parts of Europe. The aforementioned aspects leave some doubt that the term Upper Palaeolithic Revolution is appropriate to the Balkans.
In general, continual evolutionary changes are the first crucial characteristic of the transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in the Balkans. The notion of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution that has been developed for core European regions is not applicable to the Balkans. What is the reason? This particularly significant moment and its origins are defined and enlightened by other characteristics of the transition to upper Old Stone Age. The environment, climate, flora and fauna corroborate the implications.
During the last interglacial period and the most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene (from 131,000 till 12,000 BP), Europe was very different from the Balkans. The glaciations did not affect southeastern Europe to the extent that they did in the northern and central regions. The evidence of forest and steppe indicate the influence was not so drastic; some species of flora and fauna survived only in the Balkans. The Balkans today still abound in species endemic only to this part of Europe.
The notion of gradual transition (or evolution) best defines Balkan Europe from about 50,000 BP. In this sense, the material culture and natural environment of the Balkans of the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene were distinct from other parts of Europe. Douglass W. Bailey writes in Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity: "Less dramatic changes to climate, flora and fauna resulted in less dramatic adaptive, or reactive, developments in material culture."
Thus, in speaking about southeastern Europe, many classic conceptions and systematizations of human development during the Palaeolithic (and then by implication the Mesolithic) should not be considered correct in all cases. In this regard, the absence of Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the Balkans does not seem to be surprising. Civilisations develop new and distinctive characteristics as they respond to new challenges in their environment.
Upper Palaeolithic, 50,000 – 20,000 BP
In 2002, some of the oldest modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens) remains in Europe were discovered in the "Cave With Bones" (Peștera cu Oase), near Anina, Romania.[5] Nicknamed "John of Anina" (Ion din Anina), the remains (the lower jaw) are approximately 37,800 years old.
These are some of Europe's oldest remains of Homo sapiens, so they are likely to represent the first such people to have entered the continent.[6] According to some researchers, the particular interest of the discovery resides in the fact that it presents a mixture of archaic, early modern human and Neanderthal morphological features,[7] indicating considerable Neanderthal/modern human admixture,[8] which in turn suggests that, upon their arrival in Europe, modern humans met and interbred with Neanderthals. Recent reanalysis of some of these fossils has challenged the view that these remains represent evidence of interbreeding.[9] A second expedition by Erik Trinkaus and Ricardo Rodrigo, discovered further fragments (for example, a skull dated ~36,000, nicknamed "Vasile").
Two human fossil remains found in the Muierii (Peştera Muierilor) and the Cioclovina caves in Romania have been radiocarbon dated using the technique of the accelerator mass spectrometry to the age of ~ 30,000 years BP.
The first skull, scapula and tibia remains were found in 1952 in Baia de Fier, in the Muierii Cave, Gorj County in the Oltenia province, by Constantin Nicolaescu-Plopşor.
In 1941 another skull was found at the Cioclovina Cave near Commune Bosorod, Hunedoara County, in Transylvania. The anthropologist, Francisc Rainer, and the geologist, Ion Th. Simionescu, published a study of this skull.
The physical analysis of these fossils was begun in the summer of the year 2000 by Emilian Alexandrescu, archaeologist at the Vasile Pârvan Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest, and Agata Olariu, physicist at the Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering-Horia Hulubei, Bucharest, where samples were taken. One sample of bone was taken from the skull from Cioclovina; samples were also taken from the scapula and tibia remains from Muierii Cave. The work continued at the University of Lund, AMS group, by Göran Skog, Kristina Stenström and Ragnar Hellborg. The samples of bones were dated by radiocarbon method applied at the AMS system of the Lund University and the results are shown in the analysis bulletin [2] issued on the date 14 December 2001.
The human fossil remains from Muierii Cave, Baia de Fier, have been dated to 30,150 ± 800 years BP, and the skull from the Cioclovina Cave has been dated to 29,000 ± 700 years BP.[10][11][12]
Mesolithic, 13,000 – 5,000 BP
The Mesolithic period began at the end of the Pleistocene epoch (10th millennium BC) and ended with the Neolithic introduction of farming, the date of which varied in each geographical region. According to Douglass W. Bailey:[13]
It is equally important to recognize that the Balkan upper Palaeolithic was a long period containing little significant internal change. The Mesolithic may not have existed in the Balkans for the same reasons that cave art and mobiliary art never appeared: the changes in climate and flora and fauna were gradual and not drastic. (…) Furthermore, one of the reasons that we do not distinguish separate industries in the Balkans as Mesolithic is because the lithic industries of the early Holocene were very firmly of a gradually developing late Palaeolithic tradition.
The Mesolithic is the transitional period between the Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gathering existence and the development of farming and pottery production during the Postglacial Neolithic. The duration of the classical Palaeolithic, which lasted until about 10,000 years ago, is applicable to the Balkans. It ended with the Mesolithic (duration is two to four millennia) or, where an early Neolithisation was peculiar to, with the Epipalaeolithic.
Regions with limited glacial impact (e.g. the Balkans), the term Epipalaeolithic is more preferable. Regions that experienced less environmental effects during the last ice age have a much less apparent, straightforward, and occasionally marked by an absence of sites from the Mesolithic era. See the above Douglass W. Bailey quote.
Lithic evidence of the Iron Gates mesolithic culture, which is notable for its early urbanization, at Lepenski Vir. Iron Gates mesolithic sites area found in modern Serbia, south-west Romania and Montenegro. At Ostrovul Banului, the Cuina Turcului rock shelter in the Danube gorges and in the nearby caves of Climente people make relatively advanced bone and lithic tools (i.e. end-scrapers, blade lets, and flakes).
The single site representing materials related to Mesolithic in Bulgaria is Pobíti Kámǎni. There is no another lithic evidence on the period. There is a 4,000-gap between the latest Upper Palaeolithic material (13,600 BP at Témnata Dupka) and the earliest Neolithic evidence presented at Gǎlǎbnik (the beginning of the 7th millennium BC).
At Odmut in Montenegro there is evidence for human activity in the period. The research of the period was supplemented with Greek Mesolithic well represented by sites such as Frachthi Cave. The other sites are Theopetra Cave and Sesklo in Thessaly that represent the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic as well as the early Neolithic period. Yet southern and coastal sites Greece, which contained materials from the Mesolithic are less known.
Activities began to be concentrated around individual sites where people displayed personal and group identities using various decorations: wearing ornaments and painting their bodies with ochre and hematite. As regards the point of identity D. Bailey writes, "Flint-cutting tools as well as time and effort needed to produce such tools testify the expressions of identity and more flexible combinations of materials, which began to be used in the late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic."
The aforementioned allows us to speculate whether or not there was a period which could be described as Mesolithic in southeastern Europe, rather than an extended Upper Palaeolithic. On the other hand, lack of research in a number of regions, and the fact that many of the sites were close to the shore (it is evident that the current sea level is 100 m higher, and a number of sites were covered by water) means that Mesolithic Balkans could be referred to as Epipalaeolithic) Balkans which would better describe its gradual continuity and poorly defined development.
The relative climatic stability in the Balkans, compared to northern and western Europe, enabled continuous settlement in the Balkans, thus effectively functioning as an ice-age refuge from where much of Europe, especially eastern Europe, was re-populated.
The Balkans were the site of major Neolithic cultures, including Butmir, Vinča, Varna, Karanovo, Hamangia.
The Vinča culture was an early culture of the Balkans (between the 6th and the 3rd millennium BC), stretching around the course of the Danube in Serbia, Croatia, northern parts of Bosnia and Montenegro, Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, although traces of it can be found all around the Balkans, parts of Central Europe and Asia Minor.
"Kurganization" of the eastern Balkans (and the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture adjacent to the north) during the Eneolithic is associated with an early expansion of Indo-Europeans.
- Butmir culture
- Starčevo-Criş culture
- Dudeşti culture
- Cucuteni-Trypillian culture
- Hamangia culture
- Vinča culture
- Varna culture
- Tărtăria tablets
- Kurgan hypothesis
Bronze Age, 3500-1100 BCE
The Bronze Age in the Balkans is divided as follows (Boardman p. 166)
- Early Bronze Age: 20th to 16th centuries BC
- Middle Bronze Age: 16th to 14th centuries BC
- Late Bronze Age: 14th to 13th centuries BC
The Bronze Age in the Central and Eastern Balkans begins late, around 1800 BC. The transition to the Iron Age gradually sets in over the 13th century BC.
The "East Balkan Complex" (Karanovo VII, Ezero culture) covers all of Thrace. The Bronze Age cultures of the Central and Western Balkans are less clearly delineated and stretch to Pannonia, the Carpathians and into Hungary.
The culture of Mycenaean Greece (1600-1100 BC) offers the first written evidence of the Greek language,[14] Several Mycenaean attributes and achievements were borrowed or held in high regard in later periods.[14] while the their religion already included several deities that can also be found in the Olympic Pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace states.[14]
Iron Age, 1,100 BCE – 150 CE
After the period that followed the arrival of the Dorians, known as the Greek Dark Ages or Submycenaean Period, the classical Greek culture began to develop in the southern Balkan peninsula, the Aegean islands and the western Asia Minor Greek colonies starting around the 9–8th century (the Geometric Period) and peaking with the 5th century BC Athens democracy.
The Greeks were the first to establish a system of trade routes in the Balkans and, in order to facilitate trade with the natives between 700 BC and 300 BC, they founded several colonies on the Black Sea (Pontus Euxinus) coast, Asia Minor, Dalmatia etc.
The other peoples of the Balkans organized themselves in large tribal unions such as the Thracian Odrysian kingdom in the Eastern Balkans in the 5th century BC, and the Illyrian kingdom in the Western Balkans from the early 4th century.
Other tribal unions existed in Dacia at least as early as the beginning of the 2nd century BC under King Oroles. The Illyrian tribes were situated in the area corresponding to today's former Yugoslavia and Albania. The name Illyrii was originally used to refer to a people occupying an area centred on Lake Skadar, situated between Albania and Montenegro. The term Illyria was subsequently used by the Greeks and Romans as a generic name to refer to different peoples within a well defined but much greater area.[15]
Hellenistic culture spread throughout the Macedonian Empire created by Alexander the Great from the later 4th century BC. By the end of the 4th century BC Greek language and culture were dominant not only in the Balkans but also around the whole Eastern Mediterranean.
By the 6th century BC the first written sources dealing with the territory north of the Danube appear in Greek sources. By this time the Getae (and later the Daci) had branched out from the Thracian-speaking populations.
- "Protohistoric Greece bronze Age – Google Search". books.google.com. Retrieved 23 March 2018.
- e.g. Thrace in book V.
- https://www.academia.edu/400095/Sirakov_et_al._2010_.-_An_ancient_continuous_human_presence_in_the_Balkans_and_the_beginnings_of_human_settlement_in_western_Eurasia_A_Lower_Pleistocene_example_of_the_Lower_Palaeolithic_levels_in_Kozarnika_cave_North-western_Bulgaria_
- Balkan prehistory Page 15 By Douglass W. Bailey.
- Trinkaus, E., Milota, Ş., Rodrigo, R., Gherase, M., Moldovan, O. (2003), Early Modern Human Cranial remains from the Peştera cu Oase, Romania in Journal of Human Evolution, 45, pp. 245 –253, [1]
- João Zilhão, (2006), Neanderthals and Moderns Mixed and It Matters, in Evolutionary Anthropology, 15:183–195, p.185
- Trinkaus, E., Moldovan, O., Milota, Ş., Bîlgăr, A., Sarcina, L., Athreya, S., Bailey, S.E., Rodrigo, R., Gherase, M., Hilgham, T., Bronk Ramsey, C., & Van Der Plicht, J. ( 2003), An early modern human from Peştera cu Oase, Romania. Proceedings of the National Acadademy of Science U.S.A., 100(20), pp. 11231–11236
- Andrei Soficaru, Adrian Dobo and Erik Trinkaus (2006), Early modern humans from the Peştera Muierii, Baia de Fier, Romania, Proceedings of the National Acadademy of Science U.S.A., 103(46), pp. 17196-17201
- Harvati K, Gunz P, Grigorescu D. Cioclovina (Romania): affinities of an early modern European. J Hum Evol. 2007 Dec;53(6):732-46
- Olariu A., Alexandrescu E., Skog G., Hellborg R., Stenström K., Faarinen M. and Persson P, Dating of two Palaeolithic human fossil bones from Romania by accelerator mass spectrometry, NIPNE Scientific Reports 2001-202, pag. 82
- Olariu A., Skog G., Hellborg R., Stenström K., Faarinen M. and Persson P. and Alexandrescu E., 2003, Dating of two Palaeolithic human fossil bones from Romania by accelerator mass spectrometry, http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0309110
- Olariu A., Stenström K. and Hellborg R. (Eds), 2005, Proceedings of International conference on Applications of High Precision Atomic & Nuclear Methods, 2–6 September 2002, Neptun, Romania, Publishing House of Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Dating of two Palaeolithic human fossil bones from Romania by accelerator mass spectrometry, 235-239
- Balkan prehistory Page 36 By Douglass W. Bailey.
- Castleden, Rodney (2005). The Mycenaeans. London and New York: Routledge. p. 228.
- The Illyrians. John Wilkes.
- John Boardman, The Cambridge Ancient History, Part I: The Prehistory of the Balkans to 1000 BC, Cambridge University Press (1923).
- Douglass W. Bailey, Balkan prehistory.
- Alexandru Păunescu, Evoluţia istorică pe teritoriul României din paleolitic până la inceputul Neoliticului, SCIVA, 31, 1980, 4, p. 519-545.
- Paul Lachlan MacKendrick, The Dacian Stones Speak, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1974.
Originally published by Wikipedia, 10.03.2018, under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.


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|How To Use This Site
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|This is a brand new area of our web site. It is a very powerful database driven Community Bulletin Board where Registered Members will be able to exchange information, ask for help with their line and assist other researchers.
|Detailed histories of various Elder family lines. These are offered as a starting place for your own research. Nothing here is engraved in stone! We welcome corrections, additions and deletions.
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Black Toenails
Black toenails can result from a variety of things. Athletes will often encounter a problem with their toenails turning dark. Darkened nails often occur from the toe hitting the end or the top of the shoe toe area. The darkened nail is essentially a bruised nail. Sometimes, the bruise can lead to a fungal nail infection. If you are a diabetic, any change in the color of your toenail should be evaluated. Contact our office to set up an appointment. The pressure, which caused the bruising of the nail, can cause a small sore under the toenail, and the sore can become infected.
Treatment may include trimming the loose nail back and applying a topical anti-fungal medication. If the skin under the nail is ulcerated, a topical antibiotic ointment should be applied. Patients with diabetes should not treat this condition themselves and should contact our office.
Ingrown Toenails
Ingrown toenails often are the result of trimming your toenails too short, particularly on the sides of your big toes.
While they are common, ingrown toenails can be painful. When trimming your nails, avoid tapering the corners so that the nail curves with the shape of your toe. The sides of the nail will curl down and dig into your skin. Shoes that are too tight or short also may cause ingrown toenails.
Ingrown toenail start out hard, swollen and tender, and later, may become sore, red and infected. Your skin may start to grow over the ingrown toenail.
Soaking your foot in warm, soapy water several times each day is usually a good way to treat an ingrown nail. Also, you can try inserting some cotton or waxed dental floss between the nail and your skin. Please contact our office to determine the best course of treatment for your condition.
Antibiotics are sometimes prescribed if an infection is present. Part of your ingrown toenail (partial nail plate avulsion) may need to be surgically removed if an acute infection occurs. The procedure involves injecting the toe with an anesthetic and cutting out the ingrown part of the toenail.
You can prevent ingrown toenails by:
- Trimming your toenails straight across with no rounded corners.
- Ensuring that your shoes and socks are not too tight.
- Keeping your feet clean at all times.
Nail Fungus
Many people don't realize they have a fungal nail problem. Moreover, many do don't seek treatment. Still, fungal toenail infections are a common foot health problem.
Such infections can persist for years without ever causing pain. The disease, characterized by a change in a toenail's color, is often considered nothing more than a mere blemish, but it can present serious problems if left untreated.
Also referred to as Onychomycosis, fungal nail infections are an infection underneath the surface of the nail, which can also penetrate the nail. In addition to causing difficulty and pain when walking or running, fungal nail infections are often accompanied by a secondary bacterial and/or yeast infection in or about the nail plate.
A group of fungi called dermophytes easily attack the nail, thriving off keratin, the nail's protein substance. When the tiny organisms take hold, the nail may become thicker, yellowish-brown or darker in color, and foul smelling. Debris may collect beneath the nail plate, white marks frequently appear on the nail plate, and the infection is capable of spreading to other toenails, the skin, or even the fingernails.
Nail bed injury may make the nail more susceptible to all types of infection, including fungal infection. Those who suffer chronic diseases, such as diabetes, circulatory problems, or immune-deficiency conditions, are especially prone to fungal nails. Other contributory factors may be a history of Athlete's foot and excessive perspiration.
You can prevent fungal nail infections by taking these simple precautions:
- Exercise proper hygiene and regularly inspect your feet and toes.
- Keep your feet clean and dry.
- Wear shower shoes in public facilities whenever possible.
- Clip your nails straight across so that the nail does not extend beyond the tip of the toe.
Use a quality foot powder – talcum, not cornstarch – in conjunction with shoes that fit well and are made of materials that breathe.
- Avoid wearing excessively tight hosiery, which promotes moisture. Socks made of synthetic fiber tend to "wick" away moisture faster than cotton or wool socks, especially for those with more active life styles.
- Disinfect home pedicure tools and don't apply polish to nails suspected of infection.
Depending on the type of infection you have, over-the-counter liquid antifungal agents, while sometimes effective, may not prevent a fungal infection from recurring. A topical or oral medication may need to be prescribed, and the diseased nail matter and debris removed by a process called debridement.
In some cases, surgical treatment is prescribed, during which the infected nail is removed. Permanent removal of a chronically painful nail, which has not responded to any other treatment, permits the fungal infection to be cured, and prevents the return of a deformed nail.


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protection for powering any Radian transmitter or receiver. Accepts
D-tap voltages from 8 to 22 volts and provides 5 volt, 2 amp output
at USB female connector
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Amman-Jordan Marj Al-Hamam Behind Al-Quds College Mohammad Saeed Al-Abadi st. Abu Shariha Complex 1 – 3'rd floor
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A pair of doves, a small rabbit, or other livestock is placed in this handsomely decorated box.
The box is taken apart piece by piece to show the livestock has completely vanished. They think it's in the base, so you fold this flat – the bird is really gone.
Made from plywood, attractively painted, this makes a big display on stage. Folds flat for packing convenience..


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Handmade dog and cat collars. Handmade in Mexico.
Length 49 cm
Width 2,2 cm
Suitable for dogs with neck size between 35 - 43 cm
Payment can be made using Paypal.
If you want to return your purchase you can do so within 14 days after the package has been delivered to the delivery address. In order to process your return correctly, make sure you include a note containing your name and send it back to the address listed on the package. We will refund you what you paid for but not the delivery or return charge.
If you wish to exchange your item, please send back the originally purchased item and re-order the item of your liking. If you need any help please contact us.
Most items will be shipped within 1-3 working days per registered mail. The buyer will receive a notification once the package has been send. You are able to trace the parcel with a tracking code.
Your refund will either be credited to the original purchaser's credit card or bank, and will exclude shipping costs when applicable (with the exception of faulty items). If your order has been sent to a destination within the EU, all sales taxes will be refunded. Outside the EU, customs duties and sales taxes are non-refundable through Philosophie. Please note card refunds may take up to 10 business days for your bank to complete, depending on their processing time. This can vary greatly between card issuers, and unfortunately we are unable to influence this.


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Beyoncé Plays Peekaboo with Blue Ivy: See the Adorable Photo
Now you see them, now you don't!
Beyoncé got into a playful mood with daughter Blue Ivy, and she was game – literally – to share the precious moment with fans.
The superstar mom, 32, posted a photo on her Tumblr page that showed her indulging in some peekaboo with her 1-year-old.
In the adorable snapshot, the duo can be seen hiding behind what appears to be a hammock, their eyes just barely peeping out above the top.
It wasn't the only memorable pic that the singer was happy to add to her online photo album.
Bey uploaded an Instagram photo of her getting ready to bungee-jump off the top of a skyscraper, as a city skyline hovers below and a serene harbor settles in the distance.
The photo was taken at Auckland's Sky Tower – the singer is currently in New Zealand as part of her Mrs. Carter Show World Tour.
Talk about being on top of the world.
People Magazine


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the fifth and final installment of The Future of Oceans Lecture Series
with generous support by the Darrow Family
March 1 @ 3pm
The Commons at Fort Worden (New Location!)
Pacific Oyster Photo by Gilbert W. Arias/Seattle P-I
immediately following the lecture.
FREE teachers & students
Increased concentrations of CO2 can cause significant changes in marine organisms due to ocean acidification. A more acidic environment has a dramatic effect on calcifying species including oysters, clams, sea urchins, corals, and plankton. When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may be at risk. It is estimated by the end of the century surface waters of the ocean could become 150% more acidic. Senior NOAA scientist and UW Oceanography Professor Dr. Richard Feely will discuss present and future implications of increased CO2 on the health of our ocean ecosystems and ocean-based economies.
Dr. Richard A. Feely
Senior Scientist, NOAA
Pacific Marine
Environmental Laboratory,
Seattle WA
Dr. Feely received the 2010 Heinz Environmental Award and is a lead participant on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize in collaboration with former Vice President Al Gore.
No-host reception immediately following the lecture.


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I love food. Going to the grocery store is almost a religious experience for me. When standing in the meat section, I can often be found with my arms outstretched, spinning around in a circle like a kid hopped up on Captain Crunch in amazement at all the delectable treats that surround me.
But I'll be honest – my foods choices are boring as hell. I pretty much eat the same thing, or a slight variation of it, every day of the week. Adding honey or brown sugar to my oatmeal is like venturing into a brave new world for me, so I set out to change this with the help of my friend Leigh Peele.
She's put together a great series of cookbooks that offer a wide variety of great tasting, healthy recipes, ranging from 10 minute quick and easy meals, unique protein powder recipes, vegan/vegetarian and a whole lot more. I know that I'm not the only one whose dietary intake could use a kick in the butt cheeks from a variety standpoint, so I wanted to bring you along with me on this fantastic voyage.
Every other Wednesday, I'll be posting a new recipe from one of Leigh's cookbooks to give you a sampling of the goodies from all of the different flavors that she's offering. My feedback will be honest and true, as my pallet is quick to let me know if a food isn't all that and a bag of potatoe chips.
Enough of the jibba jabba – time to move on to our first recipe: Porky Pineapple
1 8-oz can of pineapple circles, drained (save juice)
454 g or 1 pound of pork chops, boneless, fat trimmed
1 teaspoon ginger powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1. Add pineapple, 1 tablespoon of pineapple juice, and ginger together in a bowl
2. Sprinkle salt and paper (or seasoning of your choice) on both sides of chops.
3. Coat a large skillet with cooking spray. Set at medium-heat and add chops once hot. Cook each side for 4 minutes.
4. Add pineapple juice that is remaning and cook for 2 minutes. Turn and cook for 1 more minute.
5. Top with pineapple (optional: grill it for 3 minutes per side on medium-heat beforehand).
Yields 4 servings:
1 serving = 189.5 calories
24.75 grams Protein
6 grams Fat
7.25 grams Carbs
0.5 grams Fiber
Entire Recipe:
758 calories
99 grams Protein
24 grams Fat
30 grams Carbs
2 grams Fiber
This recipe was the bomb! I normally just eat my pork pan-grilled and seasoned to keep it simple as possible, but I choose this specific one for several reasons:
1. I wanted to make something quick before I went to work.
2. I already bought some pork chops the night before.
3. I've never pineapple before (insert shock and awe here).
The mixture of sweet, juicy pineapple and warm meat, for lack of a more refined food critic description, will explode in your mouth like a bomb filled love, respect, and everything that is delicious in the universe. The pork is already tender because of the pan cooking, but by cooking it in the pineapple juice it becomes even more so. Due to my manly appetite, I could've eaten at least 2 full servings of this…and will do so next time.
I give this recipe 2 thumbs up, and that's only because I haven't figured out how to grow more hands yet.
That's it for today. If you too have found yourself stuck in a cooking rut, you owe it to yourself to diversify your stomach's ecosystem and check out at least one of these excellent book. The food is delicious, the layout is top notch, and for less than $10 you'll be providing yourself with a months worth of yum yum for your tum tum. Check out the books that she has to offer by clicking this link.
Affiliate note: If you purchase any of her cookbooks by clicking the links on this page, I'll get a small portion of the sale, but this in no way biases my review. I'll never promote something on this site that I haven't used personally or that I don't think will be a great benefit to you all. That is my promise to you, and if you ever see me slipping on it PLEASE be sure to shamefully call me out on it.


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This article is more than 1 year old
VR pioneer invents 'illumination-as-a-service'
VRML man Mark Pesce puts LAMP into lamps that REST at home
In the wild, early, days of the web, hopes were high that it would spawn or host virtual realities along the lines of those imagined by the likes of Vernor Vinge and William Gibson.
One of the most notable aspirants from those days was Mark Pesce, who worked on virtual reality headsets and authored Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML).
VRML never scaled the heights. Pesce moved to Australia, became a teacher, television judge, speaker and, as of now, Kickstarter hopeful with a product today known as Light by Moores Cloud.
We say today, because yesterday the product was called LightCloud. A cease and desist letter from another user of that name later letter later, the product now pays homage to Gordon Moore and his eponymous law to celebrate the fact that the light-emitting device Pesce's venture offer contains once-unimaginable computing power at a tiny price.
That computer, based on the Bulgarian single board OLinuXino, has been hooked up to 802.11 b/g/n kit, runs the LAMP stack and powers an array of 52 LEDs arrayed in a translucent cube, three of which are depicted below.
There's also an on-board accelerometer, so that when the cube is handled the LEDs' colours change into any of the two million colours they can display.
Each light can be programmed to do 'most anything. In a demonstration attended by The Register Pesce linked a light to data from Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. When fed data from a cold locations, the lights turned an icy blue. Offered data from the tropics, they emitted a warm yellow.
That kind of application led Pesce to coin the term "illumination-as-a-service", which he said caused him "to chuckle for an hour" after uttering it for the first time.
Operating as an ambient indicator of environmental conditions is one potential application for the devices, at home and in business. In the latter environment Pesce said he has already chatted to an enterprise who has imagined the device could be used to gently indicate when business processes are working well, and when service levels decline.
Another application Pesce has imagined will use a 'landing lights' feature built into the lights' software, that turns on lights in sequence. Pesce said a friend testing an early version of the devices said he could imagine a young child touching their bedside light, an act that turns on others between the child's bedroom and the bathroom, the better to ease urgent nocturnal navigation.
Moores Cloud plans to make the software and APIs for the product open, and to release apps that control its lights through the REST interface. Pesce said he hopes a developer community accretes around the device to find more uses for it. Moores Cloud will make money selling lights and creaming revenue from apps.
That will only happen if its Kickstarter, which opens next week, rakes in $US700,000, a figure Pesce said he is hopeful, but not certain, of achieving. Kickstarter projects that receive 30% of their funding targets often go on to acquire all their desired funding, he added, and if Moores Cloud hits that mark in two weeks he will feel it is likely to succeed.
Would-be investors will also be lured with a spreadsheet detailing the venture's financial plan, an openness initiative designed to increase confidence in the project. ®


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Many of the positions taken by some governments and individuals on climate change are so obviously unjust and unfair, that monkeys would get the injustice this video argues. Monkeys are believed to be capable of responding to obvious unfairness as this video demonstrates when one monkey is given a cucumber (which monkeys don't like that much) and another is give a grape (which some monkeys love). The monkey who gets the cucumber throws it back at the trainer when the monkey sees the other monkey getting a beloved grape.
The more serious point of this video is that those who desire to see that ethics and justice become more influential in climate change policy formation need to help others spot the injustice of actual positions being taken by governments and others on climate change policy issues rather than focus on perfect justice. Many positions of governments on climate change fail to pass minimum ethical scrutiny yet ethics and justice issues are largely being ignored in discussions of climate change policies at least in the United States. Although there is a growing literature on the ethical dimensions of climate change, most of this literature is focused on theoretical ethical questions rather than on the injustice of positions actually being taken about climate policies.
A new book, Navigating the Perfect Moral Storm, Climate Change Ethics, explains these matters in more detail and makes recommendations about how to give ethical consideration in climate change policy formation.
The purpose of this video is to encourage the press, NGOs, and concerned citizens around the world to turn up the volume on the ethical dimensions of climate change. Despite a thirty-five year debate on climate change, for the most part, governments, NGOs, organizations, and individuals are ignoring the ethical dimensions of climate change even though an increased focus on ethics and justice is needed to move the world to a global solution to this immense threat. The video argues that ethics is the crucial missing element in the climate change debate and if an ethical framing of most climate change policy issues were taken seriously it would transform how the public debate on climate change takes place.
Donald A. Brown
Scholar In Residence
Sustainability Ethics and Law
Widener University School of Law


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Credit Controller
A Credit Controller is responsible for recovering any unpaid money that is owed to an organisation from either businesses or individuals. A Credit Controller is responsible for all cash collection duties ,dealing with client issues .Review online bank transactions daily, update cash receipts on accounting system and reports .Weekly cash collection forecasts and analysis of variances .Prepare and post monthly intercompany sales transactions .End of month duties- close out ledgers, prepare reconciliation's and monthly reports. Salary will range from €35,000- €45,000.


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What happens when a war ends and an army comes home?
It's been a vexing problem for centuries.
After completing the long Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th Century, a newly-united Spain turned its attention and its Conquistadors toward the New World.
At the end of the Civil War, the Re-United States shifted its victorious army westward, quickly making the American Indian the Civil War's biggest loser.
Now the United States faces the problem once again.
The question is whether the Pentagon's planned reduction of the Army to "pre-World War II levels" will be met with post-World War II solutions, or post-Vietnam-like problems?
The issue now, unlike with those wars, is that America's army is a "professional" army. Since the post-Vietnam reboot of the Reagan years, military service has become a jobs program, a wide-ranging technical school and training program, and a de facto safety valve for the poor, the working poor and for immigrants seeking a path to citizenship. And for some in the middle class it's been their only chance of ever affording college.
The "Be All You Can Be" military of the 1980s—along with the "One Weekend a Month" National Guard and Reserves—matched Reagan's Cold War calculations, but it also met a more subtle desire by a chastened Pentagon to transform the military into a professional army, with economic motivations filling the patriotic void left by the catastrophe of Vietnam.
The Vietnam demobilization was a disaster for many vets who struggled with drug abuse, PTSD, homelessness and, even to this day, a high suicide rate. The inability to absorb scarred and disillusioned draftees during the economically stagnant 1970s was in stark contrast to the overwhelming success of the G.I. Bill and the "go-go" manufacturing economy of the 1950s, which quickly and effectively assimilated a large standing army into comfortable civilian employment.
The assimilation is staggering—active duty forces dropped from the wartime high of 12 million in 1945 to roughly 1.5 million by 1947. A combination of conscription and volunteerism sustained U.S. troop levels thereafter, meeting the increased needs of the Korean War and various Cold War deployments until the burning of draft cards and widespread protests challenged the system.
The Vietnam backlash led to the functional end of the draft and the marketing of military service as a career development program.
As a bonus, this re-branding of service created a new pro-military constituency within the body politic. Like defense contractors' use of civilian manufacturing jobs to secure congressional support, the new "employee army" offered enlistees a rational economic benefit beyond patriotism. It also gave the economy some help along the way, providing an injection of good old fashioned socialism under the guise of patriotic duty.
While many high school grads accumulated massive, inescapable debts as college students, the all-volunteer military offered a way out of the economic dead-ends created by the unleashing of Wall Street's financial wizards, the end of manufacturing and the outsourcing of, it seemed, just about everything.
Military service mitigated the effects of Reaganomics in the 1980s, offered an alternative to the free trade and tech-bubble economy of the 1990s and, with a rapid post-9/11 ramp up, created an economic safety net for the faux economy of the new century. Americans were asked to support the troops while employing the troops actually helped to support America's hollow economy.
Although these Army personnel cuts come at a time when Wall Street enjoys record highs and policymakers talk about "The Recovery" as if it's an actual thing, Americans remain unconvinced that the rising tide is lifting their boats. Gallup's latest poll shows unemployment atop their list of concerns, with the "economy in general" a close second. Americans want and need jobs, and not just the type of jobs that will benefit from a rise in the minimum wage.
For those scheduled to leave military service in the near term, they will find themselves in a wage-depressed, job-scarce economy. For those who planned on using the military "safety valve" as a way out of a stagnant future, the Pentagon is curtailing one of the only employment and job-training programs available to the poor, the working poor and the dwindling middle class.
Some called it the "poverty draft"—meaning that the poor had few options other than military service. Military recruiters called it "easy cash," reaping illicit signing bonuses in what's become a huge kickback scandal reaching up the chain of command. But none dare call it what it often is—a safety net for those who might otherwise fall through the cracks.
Just think what the Great Recession could've been like if America didn't have over 540,000 people in the Army or a total of 1.4 million in uniform, all earning paychecks, getting healthcare and removed from the harrowing competition of a severely depressed job market?
And what would happen if even a quarter of the 1,387,638 active duty militaryserving in 2013 tried to get jobs in an economy of $19 billion companies with only 55 employees, bank tellers who depend on public assistance to scrape by and Americans who are one missed paycheck away from disaster?
Maybe the answer is coming, or maybe the answer is that the army isn't really coming home. Rather, it's just pursuing some cost-cutting measures designed to lower overhead and increase profitability.
The rise of flying killer robots, warfare by algorithm and a wide array of high-tech options to low-tech boots on the ground all give the Pentagon an easy way to reduce personnel costs without curtailing its global appetite for destruction. On the surface it looks like an incremental step away from empire. But it's really a corporate-style move to cut the one thing all executives like to cut most—the cost of labor.
In addition to trimming the Army down to around 440,000, other cost-cutting measures include:
- a one-year salary freeze for most officers
- a meager one-percent pay raise for military personnel
- "slowing of growth" in the tax-free housing allowance
- a $1.4 billion subsidy cut to military commissaries
- a rise in health insurance deductibles and co-pays for some retirees and active service family members
Of course, there is nothing here about closing down the Pentagon's world-wide network of lush golf courses, freezing the F-35 program until rampant cost overruns can be stopped or cutting the actual defense budget. In fact, the White House is plotting a rise in spending for 2016. In light of Secretary Hagel's plan, these cuts really amount to a windfall for the Military-Industrial makers of high-tech weaponry by shifting cost savings into new, profitable weapons systems.
Meanwhile, active duty enlistees are increasingly reliant upon on food stamps. Last year, military families redeemed $104 million worth of taxpayer-supplied food stamps at those subsidized commissaries the Pentagon wants to trim. That's up from nearly $25 million in 2007. But it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the 44 million Americans who rely on those same food stamps, but don't have access to subsidized commissaries.
So, like civilian workers, military personnel face a daunting future of stagnant wages and declining benefits. If they do come home, the one part of the economy that can absorb them is the growing police state—which receives excess military hardware doled out by the Pentagon, and the flourishing prison system—which leads the world in incarceration. Perhaps out of work soldiers can leverage their training to get jobs guarding the 700,000 veterans currently imprisoned in America.
If so, they'd be closing the "circle of professionalism" that began as a response to Vietnam, but also typified an ongoing unwillingness to invest in the civilian economy like America did at the end of World War II.
We need to update you on where Truthout stands.
To be brutally honest, Truthout is behind on our fundraising goals for the year. There are a lot of reasons why. We're dealing with broad trends in our industry, trends that have led publications like Vice, BuzzFeed, and National Geographic to make painful cuts. Everyone is feeling the squeeze of inflation. And despite its lasting importance, news readership is declining.
To ensure we stay out of the red by the end of the year, we have a long way to go. Our future is threatened.
We've stayed online over two decades thanks to the support of our readers. Because you believe in the power of our work, share our transformative stories, and give to keep us going strong, we know we can make it through this tough moment.
If you value what we do and what we stand for, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work.


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We're pretty excited at Windermere. Why, you ask? Because our agents recently helped us reach a major milestone. Thanks to their generosity we've raised more than $30 million for the Windermere Foundation which supports low-income and homeless families. These donations fund critical services and basic needs, such as foodbanks, homeless shelters, and youth programs.
This is all possible because every time one of our agents helps a client buy or sell a home, a portion of their commission goes to the Windermere Foundation. Starting today, we are celebrating their generosity with the "Windermere Week of Gratitude". Over the next five days we will share stories about the Windermere Foundation and the types of services we support. You can follow these stories on Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. Kicking it all off is this video which highlights how the Windermere Foundation is helping to make a positive difference in the lives of our neighbors in need.
If you've ever worked with a Windermere agent, then you too are a part of the Windermere Foundation, and you too helped us reach this milestone. So on behalf of everyone at Windermere, thank you!


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Related Content
Press Release
Press Release
A former co-owner of a U.S. civilian contractor company was sentenced today in San Antonio to serve 30 months in prison for falsifying official documents in connection with Iraq reconstruction government contracts, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman for the Western District of Texas.
Jill Ann Charpia, 33, formerly of San Antonio and currently of Colorado, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Orlando L. Garcia in the Western District of Texas. In addition to her prison term, Charpia was sentenced to serve three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $920,000 plus interest in restitution to the United States.
According to court documents, from 2008 through 2009, Charpia was the co-owner of Sourcing Specialist LLC, a privately owned company that contracted with the U.S. government to provide services in Iraq. In September 2008, she contracted to provide a turn-key housing facility located outside Iraq's International Zone to facilitate the introduction of multi-national firms desiring to develop business opportunities in Iraq. That same month, Charpia signed and submitted to the Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Contracting Command Iraq/Afghanistan, for payment through the contract, a false invoice in the amount of $1,270,075 purportedly for mobilization costs. She followed up with two invoices, one representing that she had paid $700,000 for the rental of two villas in Baghdad, and the other representing that she had paid $570,075 on the purchase of three armored vehicles from an Iraqi company. In October 2008, as a result of her false and fraudulent statements, DOD caused $1,270,075 to be wired to Charpia's bank account. Charpia admitted that she fabricated both invoices and forged the signatures on the documents. She also admitted that she did not purchase any armored vehicles and paid only half the submitted cost for the villas.
This case is being prosecuted by Special Trial Attorney Mark Grider of the Criminal Division's Fraud Section, on detail from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), and by Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith A. Patton of the Western District of Texas. The case is being investigated by SIGIR, Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation and the Major Procurement Fraud Unit of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command.


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Release new LED street lights
Business, Business Opportunities, Electronics
In communication with our clients, we collect requirements and make research to develop this new type.
European style, close space safely protects the internal components.
1. Pluggable modular technology, easy onsite tool maintenance;
2. Honeycomb briquette burning effect and overall cooling technology of the structure;
3. Multiple IP68 protection, highest waterproof level; Metal structure, high mechanical strength;
4. Ergonomic light distribution to achieve uniform illuminated effects; Free modular serialization and full power range solution.
Product link to site:
LED Street Light T18A
LED Street Light T18B
LED Street Light T28A
LED Street Light T28B
Release new LED street lights