A Lesson Learned

Okay, I just finished my first official assignment from my new client. I’m working with a company that edits manuscripts written by non-native English language speakers and intended for English language scientific journals. Sounds good, right? Yeah, it will be, once I figure out how to estimate how hard a particular editing project will be!

I spent about 30 minutes looking through the introduction of the manuscript to try and determine the difficulty level of the editing job. Getting this right is important, because that difficulty level is what I base my fee on. The intro looked pretty good, so I estimated a mid-range difficulty level. I really should have looked through the methods, too. Oh. My. God. It took me 10 hours (over three days!) to slog through the whole thing!

I really lost some money on this one. Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to consider it a lesson learned and move on, now won’t I?

Journal Club: Tribology of Alternative Bearings

Originally posted on 12/6/2006

Presidential Guest Lecture: Tribology of Alternative Bearings
John Fisher, Zhongmin Jin, Joanne Tipper, Martin Stone, Eileen Ingham
Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research, Number 453, pp 25-34, December, 2006

Who is John Fisher?

The paper we’ll look at today is a review of much of the work of John Fisher, et al., from the Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom. Much of Fisher’s career has been directed toward the study of the tribological behavior of total joint (hip) replacement bearing surfaces. Specifically, he has examined the wear behavior of these bearings and corresponding biological activity (osteolytic behavior) of wear debris produced by materials such as highly cross-linked polyethylene, alumina, cobalt-chromium alloy, and CrCN coatings.

John Fisher currently holds the following titles at the University of Leeds: Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Director of BITE Centre for Industrial Collaboration, and Leader of the Biomedical Engineering Research Group in the School of Mechanical Engineering.

Journal Club: Bio-Ferrography of UHMWPE wear debris

Originally posted on 1/4/2007

Donna M. Meyer, A. Tillinghast, N. C. Hanumara, A. Franco, Bio-Ferrography to Capture and Separate Polyethylene Wear Debris from Hip Simulator Fluid and Compared With Conventional Filter Method. Journal of Tribology, Vol. 128, April 2006, 436-441.

Introduction and Importance of Capturing and Separatation of Polyethylene Wear Debris

I found this manuscript a few weeks ago after noticing a news release about the topic and the first author Donna Meyer. Donna is an assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics. She indicates her funding sources for this study to be NSF and NIH grants.

Oh, the thrill of discovery . . .

I’ll be reading a new blog from now on. I just found Inebriated Press – funny stuff, The Daily Show good! I just hope that one day I can write in the same voice!

I’ve Moved!

I couldn’t take the limitations any more at my old blogging host, so here I am. So far, things look great here! I’ll shortly be reposting my stuff from the old site here.