Ephedrine is a medication and stimulant. It is used to prevent low blood pressure during spinal anesthesia, it has been used for asthma and obesity but is not the preferred treatment. It is of unclear benefit in nasal congestion, it can be taken by injection into a muscle, vein, or just under the skin. Onset with intravenous use is fast, while injection into a muscle can take 20 minutes, by mouth can take an hour for effect; when given by injection it lasts about an hour and when taken by mouth it can last up to four hours. Common side effects include trouble sleeping, headache, high blood pressure, fast heart rate, loss of appetite, inability to urinate. Serious side effects include stroke, heart attack, abuse. While safe in pregnancy, its use in this population is poorly studied. Use during breastfeeding is not recommended. Ephedrine works by increasing the activity of the β adrenergic receptors. Ephedrine was first isolated in 1885 and came into commercial use in 1926, it is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system.

It is available as a generic medication. The wholesale cost in the developing world is about US$0.69–1.35 per dose. In the United States it is not expensive, it can be found in plants of the Ephedra type. Dietary supplements containing ephedrine are illegal in the United States, with the exception of those used in traditional Chinese medicine, where its presence is noted by má huáng. Both ephedrine and pseudoephedrine increase blood pressure and act as bronchodilators, with pseudoephedrine having less effect. Ephedrine may decrease motion sickness, but it has been used to decrease the sedating effects of other medications used for motion sickness. Ephedrine promotes modest short-term weight loss fat loss, but its long-term effects are unknown. In mice, ephedrine is known to stimulate thermogenesis in the brown adipose tissue, but because adult humans have only small amounts of brown fat, thermogenesis is assumed to take place in the skeletal muscle. Ephedrine decreases gastric emptying. Methylxanthines such as caffeine and theophylline have a synergistic effect with ephedrine with respect to weight loss.

This led to marketing of compound products. One of them, known as the ECA stack, contains ephedrine with aspirin, it is a popular supplement taken by bodybuilders seeking to cut body fat before a competition. As a phenethylamine, ephedrine has a similar chemical structure to amphetamines and is a methamphetamine analogue having the methamphetamine structure with a hydroxyl group at the β position; because of ephedrine's structural similarity to methamphetamine, it can be used to create methamphetamine using chemical reduction in which ephedrine's hydroxyl group is removed. The most popular method for reducing ephedrine to methamphetamine is similar to the Birch reduction, in that it uses anhydrous ammonia and lithium metal in the reaction; the second-most popular method uses red iodine in the reaction with ephedrine. Moreover, ephedrine can be synthesized into methcathinone via simple oxidation; as such, ephedrine is listed as a table-I precursor under the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

Ephedrine may be quantified in blood, plasma, or urine to monitor possible abuse by athletes, confirm a diagnosis of poisoning, or assist in a medicolegal death investigation. Many commercial immunoassay screening tests directed at the amphetamines cross-react appreciably with ephedrine, but chromatographic techniques can distinguish ephedrine from other phenethylamine derivatives. Blood or plasma ephedrine concentrations are in the 20-200 µg/l range in persons taking the drug therapeutically, 300-3000 µg/l in abusers or poisoned patients and 3–20 mg/l in cases of acute fatal overdosage; the current WADA limit for ephedrine in an athlete's urine is 10 µg/ml. Ephedrine should not be used in conjunction with certain antidepressants, namely norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitors, as this increases the risk of symptoms due to excessive serum levels of norepinephrine. Bupropion is an example of an antidepressant with an amphetamine-like structure similar to ephedrine, it is an NDRI, its action bears more resemblance to amphetamine than to fluoxetine in that its primary mode of therapeutic action involves norepinephrine and to a lesser degree dopamine, but it releases some serotonin from presynaptic clefts.

It should not be used with ephedrine. Ephedrine should be used with caution in patients with inadequate fluid replacement, impaired adrenal function, hypercapnia, hypertension, prostatic hypertrophy, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, during delivery if maternal blood pressure is >130/80 mmHg, during lactation. Contraindications for the use of ephedrine include: closed-angle glaucoma, phaeochromocytoma, asymmetric septal hypertrophy, concomitant or recent monoamine oxidase inhibitor therapy, general anaesthesia with halogenated hydrocarbons, tachyarrhythmias or ventricular fibrillation, or hypersensitivity to ephedrine or other stimulants. Ephedrine should not be used at any time during pregnancy unless indicated by a qualified physician and only when other options are unavailable. Ephedrine is a dangerous natural compound.

Elham Yaghoubian is a political activist and designer living in the United States. Elham wrote her first book at the age of sixteen, she is known as the first female Jewish Iranian writer in Iran. She received a Bachelor degree in Foreign Language Translation from Tehran Azad University in 1994, she published her second book in 1996, republished four times. She continued to cooperate with the Jewish journal Ofogh-e Bina as general editor and writer until her emigration to United States. Elham was one of the head editors of Bina Magazine e. g. ofogh bina. In 1998, Elham along with some of her nationalist peers founded the Marz-e Por Gohar, Iranians for a secular Republic, her third novel (Ashk-e Sham' e. g. Tear of the Candle] was published in 1999. Elham’s focuses in her novels are the Persian women between tradition and modernity, the absence and maltreating of their rights predominantly by their family members and lack of equivalency in social life; the novel Ašk-e šamʿ is a brilliant example of such disorder within Iranian community.

After the pro-democracy movement of July 1999, she moved to the United States. She started working as a counselor at JVS, one of the Jewish Federation's agencies helping new immigrant and refugees. In the meantime, she continued her pro-democracy activism from the U. S, she has undertaken trips to different cities and states within United States where she gave lectures, interviewed prominent human right activists and high ranked government members. Elhmam’s activities towards elucidating of maltreating of human rights in Iran, denial of Holocaust on behalf of Iranian leaderships and her struggle against antiemetic resentments among Iranian politicians caused harsh verbal attacks of several radical Iranian newspapers and state-financed broadcastings which identified her as Zionist and anti-revolutionary individual. In 2007, Elham started working as Community Outreach Advisor at California Army National Guard. In 2008, she pursued her studies in the masters program of the International Relations Department of California State University.

In 2010, Elham announced the launch of Aryana Fashion a new venture selling trendy handbags and accessories. Elham translated and published the Global Directory of Zorastrian Fire Temples in 2011. Elham Yaghoubian’s open letter in 2013 addressed to the Iranian comedian and actor Akbar Abdi raised and provoked awareness of various news agency inside and outside Iran; this letter has been written as response to Akbar Abdi’s racist remarks towards the Jews during the speech he gave in the ceremony, organized to his honour. Elham continues to be a prolific writer and activist on behalf of the Jewish Iranian diaspora in Los Angeles and nationwide, she is board member of few non-profit organizations such as B'nai B'rith, Iranian American Jewish Federation and advisor of 7dorim She Is a board member of Friends of Westwood Library and Board member and CFO of West LA Chamber of Commerce The Silent Ocean Storm of Destiny The Candle's Tear Global Directory of Zoroastrian Fire Temples

Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. He took up arms against the United States federal government to fight against encroachment by white American settlers on Native American territory and to preserve the traditional way of life of the Lakota people, his participation in several famous battles of the Black Hills War on the northern Great Plains, among them the Fetterman Fight in 1866 in which he acted as a decoy and the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 in which he led a war party to victory, earned him great respect from both his enemies and his own people. In September 1877, four months after surrendering to U. S. troops under General George Crook, Crazy Horse was fatally wounded by a bayonet-wielding military guard while resisting imprisonment at Camp Robinson in present-day Nebraska. He ranks among the most notable and iconic of Native American warriors and was honored by the U. S. Postal Service in 1982 with a 13¢ Great Americans series postage stamp.

Sources differ on the precise year of Crazy Horse's birth, but most agree he was born between 1840 and 1845. According to Šúŋka Bloká, he and Crazy Horse "were both born in the same year at the same season of the year," which census records and other interviews place in 1842. Ptehé Wóptuȟ’a, an Oglala medicine man and spiritual adviser to Crazy Horse, reported that Crazy Horse was born "in the year in which the band to which he belonged, the Oglala, stole One Hundred Horses, in the fall of the year," a reference to the annual Lakota calendar or winter count. Among the Oglala winter counts, the stealing of 100 horses is noted by Cloud Shield, by American Horse and Red Horse owner, as equivalent to the year 1840–41. Oral history accounts from relatives on the Cheyenne River Reservation place his birth in the spring of 1840. On the evening of his son's death, the elder Crazy Horse told Lieutenant H. R. Lemly that the year of birth was 1840. Crazy Horse was born to parents from two bands of the Lakota division of the Sioux, his father being an Oglala and his mother a Miniconjou.

His father, born in 1810, was named Tȟašúŋke Witkó. Crazy Horse was named Čháŋ Óhaŋ at birth, his mother, Tȟašína Ȟlaȟlá Wiŋ, gave him the nickname Pȟehíŋ Yuȟáȟa or Žiží as his light curly hair resembled her own. She died. One account said that after the son had reached maturity and shown his strength, his father gave him his name and took a new one, Waglúla. Another version of how the younger Crazy Horse acquired his name is that he took it after going through the haŋbléčheya ceremony. Crazy Horse's cousin was Maȟpíya Ičáȟtagya, he was with him when he died. Rattling Blanket Woman was the daughter of White Cow, her older siblings were Good Looking Woman. Her younger sister was named Looks At It given the name They Are Afraid of Her; the historian George Hyde wrote that Rattling Blanket Woman was Miniconjou and the sister of Spotted Tail, who became a Brulé head chief. In the summer of 1844, Waglúla went on a buffalo hunt, he came across a Miniconjou Lakota village under attack by Crow warriors. He rescued it.

Corn, the head man of the village, had lost his wife in the raid. In gratitude he gave Waglula his two eldest daughters as wives: Iron Between Horns and Kills Enemy. Corn's youngest daughter, Red Leggins, 15 at the time, requested to go with her sisters. According to Frederick Hoxie's Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Crazy Horse was the third in his male line to bear the name of Crazy Horse; the love of his life was Tȟatȟáŋkasápawiŋ, whom he courted, but she married another man named Mní Níča. At one point, Crazy Horse persuaded Black Buffalo Woman to run away with him. No Water ran after his wife; when he found her with Crazy Horse, he fired at him, injuring him in the face and leaving a noticeable scar. Crazy Horse was married two times, first to second to Nellie Larrabee. Nellie Larrabee was given the task of spying on Crazy Horse for the military, so the marriage is suspect. Only Black Shawl bore him any children, a daughter named Kȟokípȟapiwiŋ. Crazy Horse lived in a Lakota camp in present-day Wyoming with his younger half-brother, Little Hawk, son of Iron Between Horns and Waglula.

Little Hawk was the nephew of his maternal step-grandfather, Long Face, a cousin, High Horse. In 1854, the camp was entered by Lieutenant John Lawrence Grattan and 29 other U. S. troopers. The cow had wandered into the camp, after a short time someone butchered it and passed the meat out among the people; when the soldiers fatally shot Chief Conquering Bear, the Lakota returned fire, killing all 30 soldiers and a civilian interpreter in what was called the Grattan massacre. After witnessing the death of Conquering Bear at the Grattan massacre, Crazy Horse began to get trance visions. Curly went out on a vision quest to seek guidance but without going through the traditional procedures first. In his vision, a warrior on his horse rode out of a lake and the horse seemed to float and dance throughout the vision, he wore simple clothing, no face paint, his ha