The Los Angeles Coroner's chief investigator revisited the office of Michael Jackson's dermatologist Wednesday, even though the coroner announced last week his "thorough and comprehensive" report was completed.

"We wanted some additional information, and they provided it," Ed Winter said as he emerged 90 minutes after entering Dr. Arnold Klein's Beverly Hills, California, dermatology clinic.

Klein, who treated Jackson for decades, denied in a CNN interview last month that he had given Jackson dangerous drugs.

"If you took all the pills I gave him in the last year at once, it wouldn't do anything to you," he told CNN's Larry King.

Jackson visited Klein's office several times in the weeks before his death, including one visit just three days before.

Dr. Conrad Murray, Jackson's personal physician who is under investigation, said in a video posted online Tuesday that he has "faith the truth will prevail."

Murray, who was with Jackson when he died, recorded the one-minute video in Houston, Texas, last Wednesday and it posted on YouTube Tuesday, the spokeswoman for his lawyer said.

"I have done all I could do," Murray said. "I told the truth, and I have faith the truth will prevail."

Investigators have searched Murray's home and clinics for evidence related to the anesthetic propofol, according to documents filed in court. A source close to the investigation told CNN it's believed Murray administered the drug, also known by the brand name Diprivan, to Jackson within 24 hours of his death.

Ed Chernoff, Murray's lawyer, said it was only after Murray moved to Los Angeles in May 2009 that "he realized that Michael Jackson had some very unusual problems."

Murray did not conduct drug tests on Jackson and had no way of knowing, other than from Jackson's words, if he was taking other drugs, Chernoff's spokeswoman, Miranda Sevcik, told CNN.

Chernoff has refused to confirm or deny whether Murray administered propofol to Jackson, although he denied "unequivocally" that Murray gave Jackson painkillers.

A former prosecutor who has also defended doctors in medical malpractice cases involving anesthesia said prosecutors would face "a very, very severe uphill battle" when charging a doctor with manslaughter.

"You have to prove gross recklessness in the prescription of drugs," Paul Callan told CNN. "That's really hard with a doctor because doctors are always prescribing drugs; patients occasionally die from them. That's not criminal conduct. But here, you have to show that this doctor should've known Jackson was an addict and that he could've died from these drugs."

Source: cnn.com

Question 14 / BA 225 Assignment 1 - What is the weighted average method of determining equivalent units? Why is it used? What are it's weaknesses?

Procedure for computing the unit cost of a process. Beginning work-in-process inventory costs are added to the costs of the current period, then a weighted average is obtained by dividing the combined costs by equivalent units. Thus there is only one average cost for goods completed. Equivalent units under weighted average costing may be computed as follows:

Units completed + (ending work-in-process x degree of completion (%)). To illustrate, the following data relate to the activities of Department A during the month of January:

First-In, First-Out (FIFO) Costing

Procedure for computing the unit costs of a process by which beginning work-in-process inventory costs are separated from added costs applied in the current period. Thus, there are two unit costs for the period: (1) beginning work-in-process units completed and (2) units started and completed in the same period. Under FIFO, the beginning Work-In-Process is assumed to be completed and transferred first. Equivalent units under FIFO costing may be computed as follows:

Question 11 / BA 225 Assignment 1 - Why is a process cost system not appropriate for companies that produce items that are distinctly different from one another?

http://lsb.scu.edu/~meames/chap17.htm

A University of Illinois at Chicago ecologist has studied and noticed that the head shape and overall size of rodents has been changing over the past century. The main reason is thought to be the changes to human population density and climate change.

I didn't quite understand the effect of the human population density upon their growth ....

I also have recently seen a documentary about rats which are extremely intelligent, they have the ability to addapt really easy to different modifications, climate changes or situations in order to survive.

In the end it is natural that beings evolve, to addapt.

I think that there are enough other very important problems to take care of in the world...

What do you think ?

For a research team in Mexico, tequila has become more than a simple drink. The scientists have turned the traditional liquid into precious stones and, more specific, into diamonds.

Javier Morales, Luis Apatiga and Victor Castano from the National Autonomous University in Mexico have made the chemic discovery during a transformation experiment of different organic substances, such as acetone and ethanol, into diamonds.

The scientists have noticed that tequila, with a 40% alcohol concentration, has the ideal proportion of water and ethanol in order to create diamond crystals. To produce the diamonds they evaporated the tequila and then they heated the vapors up at more than 760 Celsius degrees before being stored into silicon or non-corrosive steel containers.

The resulted diamond crystals had between 100 and 400 nanometers in diameter and did not contain impurities. Hard and heat resistant, the diamond particles can have some commercial applications like introducing them into cutting tools and digital optical devices.

For now, the team is trying to obtain diamonds with impurities that can be used within a new type of semi conductor. Also, the researchers are eager to turn their work into an industrial initiative until 2011 and they hope to find a tequila distiller that can provide to them the necessary material.

Source: www.descopera.ro

Holiday e-mail

UUUU, I "borowed" this from a good friend of mine:

Tomorrow i will be in holiday so I will not be in the office. If you want to contact me, please, write me to the following e-mail address (spelled as it is spoken in Romanian: "Tumorau ai uil bi in holidei, sau ail ud nat bi in ofis . If iu uant tu contact mi pliz ruait mi tu za falouing imeil adres"):

notanswering@thephone.com
nosignal@atall.com
giveme@abreak.com
always@busy.com

Have a very nice day !!!

From the cycle "how stupid can someone be" ....

I have read this article:

"A romantic wedding in the Tuscan countryside ended with injuries after an attempt to launch the bride's bouquet from a plane brought down the tiny aircraft.

Italian police say two people were hurt in the crash of the ultralight plane after the bridal bouquet they launched got caught in the aircraft's rear rotor.

The flowers blocked the engine, bringing the plane down by a youth hostel.

Police in the nearby town of Piombino said Tuesday the pilot was lightly injured in Saturday's crash, while the passenger who threw the bouquet had several broken bones.

The bride and groom were not aboard." - (source: chinadaily.com)

....and I have to say this......guys, don't you that pilots are affraid of birds, UFO's and ... other planes ?

At least, thank God there are ok !

I am sure that he is singing and learning the angels the moonwalk.....

I watched the Michael Jackson TV memorial, it was really touching.....I was most impressed by his daughter, Paris, who burst into tears when saying she loved her father very much and that he was the best daddy in the world.

Anyway.......he deserves to be remembered as the greatest entertainer ever in the music industry. His innovative, unique style brought us love, joy, tears. We fell inlove on his music, we separated, we learned to be better, to love people and the world that we live in.

I'm just sorry that we have to lose someone before we realised how much we appreciate him / her.

It seems today I am in an "environmental" mood ......

I am trying to convince all my friends / aquaintances to do something for the environment and not just say "if others don't do it, why should I"....

It is very important for us and for our planet to do even small things - that may seem unimportant at a first glance, but really helpfull in the future - that for the environment mean a lot.

Did you know that.....

1. If just 25% of the families used 10 fewer plastic bags a month, we would save over 2.5 BILLION bags a year.
2. On the average, the 140 million cars are estimated to travel almost 4 billion miles in a day, and according to the Department of Transportation, they use over 200 million gallons of gasoline doing it.
3. Every year we throw away 24 million tons of leaves and grass. Leaves alone account for 75% of our solid waste in the fall.
4. Every Sunday, more than 500,000 trees are used to produce the 88% of newspapers that are never recycled.
5. Over 100 pesticide ingredients are suspected to cause birth defects, cancer, and gene mutations.
6. Every ton of recycled office paper saves 380 gallons of oil.
7. About 1% landfill space is full of disposable diapers, which take 500 years to decompose.
8. Energy saved from one recycled aluminum can will operate a TV set for 3 hours, and is the equivalent to half a can of gasoline.
9. Glass produced from recycled glass instead of raw materials reduces related air pollution by 20%, and water pollution by 50%.
10. People use 50 million tons of paper annually consuming more than 850 million trees.
11. Homeowners use up to 10 times more toxic chemicals per acre than farmers.
12. By turning down your central heating thermostat one degree, fuel consumption is cut by as much as 10%.
13. Insulating your attic reduces the amount of energy loss in most houses by up to 20%.
14. Enough glass was thrown away in 1990 to fill the Twin Towers (1,350 feet high) of New York's World Trade Center every two weeks.
15. One ton of carbon dioxide that is released in the air can be prevented by replacing every 75 watt light bulbs with energy efficient bulbs.
16. Many banks lent large sums of money to developing nations. In order to pay those debts plus interest many nations have turned to the mining of their natural resources as a source of financial aid.
17. Every day 40,000 children die from preventable diseases.
18. The human population of the world is expected to be nearly tripled by the year 2100.
19. A three percent annual growth rate will result in the doubling of consumption and production of food and other products in 25 short years. The amount of motor vehicles that are expected to be operated will increase 15 million a year until at least 2010.
20. The world's per capita grain production has been on the downfall since 1985 despite the use of fertilizers and pesticides.
21. Already a train system has been developed (back in 1987) which is based on magnetic levitation and causes minimal pollution. These versions of a train are already in use in several countries.
22. Fibre optics, made of glass, are being used to replace copper cables throughout the world.
23. The uncontrolled fishing that is allowed has reduced the amount of commercial species. Some species, up to one-tenth of their original population.
24. Every day 50 to 100 species of plants and animals become extinct as their habitat and human influences destroy them.

So, let's "heal the world and make it a better place", like MJ said.

Last month we (me, Miha, Claudia and more) went an info trip to Bulgaria and we visited Queen Mary's Castle in Blachik. At first I was gelous of one of my friends who went to Santorini, but the feeling suddenly faded away when I arrived at the Castle. I felt so peaceful, this place is ideal to relax and to get rid of the everyday stress and dark thoughts (the elevator not working because the light went off, pushing the old lady in front of you down the staires because you are in a hurry to get to work, kicking the bus controller's a.. because you forgot to buy a ticket, etc...).

Back to Balchik Castle: I guess there's no need for me to mention that it is located in Balchik, Bulgaria . The official name of the castle was The Quiet Nest. It was built between 1926 and 1937 at Queen Mary's wish and it covers a 10.000 sqm area. The castle has a number of residential villas, a smoking hall, a wine cellar, a monastery, a holy spring (advise: do not drink from it's water, i repeat do not drink from it's water, urgent physiological needs after you doing that - I did ...), a chapel (for you to pray in case nobody told not to drink from the holy spring), a super park that is today a state - run Botanical Garden, the silver fountain - it is called that way because the queen has put lots of silver objects in it to purify the water, the divine garden, the moan bridge - they say that you have to make a wish while you cross the bridge (carefull not to lose your teeth on the bridge's steps), do not miss the Korona restaurant - they have a veeery good ice cake, the cretan maise which is made of rocks brought from Crete, Mary's tomb.

Mary of Edinburgh, the wife of Ferdinand Ist of Romania visited Balchik in 1921 and she liked the location very much. So she bought it and arranged it in her style: planted wineyards, hired a florist from Switzerland to arrange the gardens, made water mills (these water mills make a very spookie noise). Balkan and Oriental motives were used in the construction of the castle that was built by the Italian architects Augustino and Americo. The main building's extravagant minaret coexists with a Christian chapel, perfectly illustrating Queen Baha'i beliefs. By the way, did you know that it is said that the rooster on top of the minaret banishes the evil spirits ? I thought that it indicates the cardinal points .

The botanical garden reaches 16 acres and accomodates 2000 plant species belonging to 85 families and 200 genera. One of the garden's main attractions is the collection of large - sised cactus species arranged outdoors on 1000 sqm, the second of its kind in Europe afeter the one in Monaco.