Postural problems of the left shoulder in an orchestral trombonist

Professional musicians require a disciplined and balanced regime of practise and performance to enable them to cope with the physical challenges of their chosen instrument and to reduce the risk of work- related injury. If practise or performance strategies are suddenly changed, permanent damage may occur even in a player with a mature, well-established technique. The trombone presents unique physical challenges which are heightened by recent developments in instrumental design as well as by orchestral working conditions. This study presents the experiences of a professional orchestral trombonist who worked as a principal player in a UK orchestra until his performing career was cut short by a performance related injury. His personal approach to practise is discussed in the context of the physical and professional challenges associated with contemporary orchestral practices. The case study demonstrates the importance of considering the interplay between psychological and physical factors in the development and treatment of injury in musicians.     

Beyond Employment and Income: The Association Between Young Adults’ Finances and Marital Timing

This study tested an extension of the theory of marital timing (Oppenheimer, Am J Sociol 94:563–591, 1988) by assessing whether visible and less visible financial assets and debt mediated the relationship between employment and the likelihood of marriage. We conducted these prospective, longitudinal analyses using a sample of 1,522 never-married young adults from the National Survey of Families and Households. For participants who were not cohabiting at Wave 1, financial issues such as car values predicted marriage but did not mediate the relationship between work hours, occupational prestige, and the likelihood of marriage. For cohabiting participants, employment factors were the strongest predictor of marriage.     

Confronting the Material Convoy in Later Life

We adapt a metaphor from life course studies to designate the whole of one's possessions, across time, as a convoy of material support. This dynamic collection of things supports daily life and the self, but it can also present difficulty in later life. To alleviate the purported burdens of the material convoy, a discourse has arisen that urges elders and their family members to reduce the volume of possessions. An analysis of 11 such possession management texts shows authors addressing two distinct audiences about elders' need to downsize: family members and elders themselves. Authors who speak to family members do so with an urgent, unsentimental tone that echoes mainstream clutter-control advice about disorderly, overfull households. In texts for elders, the standard critique about consumption and unruly lives is gentler, more sensitive to the meaning of things, and underplays the emotions of divestment. There is stress on the responsibility to spare the next generation and control one's legacy. These latter texts seem to respect that downsizing in later life symbolizes a narrowing of the life world.     

Cultural mechanisms and the persistence of neighborhood violence

Sociologists have given considerable attention to identifying the neighborhood-level social-interactional mechanisms that influence outcomes such as crime, educational attainment, and health. Yet, cultural mechanisms are often overlooked in quantitative studies of neighborhood effects. This paper adds a cultural dimension to neighborhood effects research by exploring the consequences of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural frame in which people perceive the law as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. The authors find that legal cynicism explains why homicide persisted in certain Chicago neighborhoods during the 1990s despite declines in poverty and declines in violence city-wide.     

Personality, drug preference, drug use, and drug availability

This study examined the relationship between drug preference, drug use, drug availability, and personality among individuals (n = 100) in treatment for substance abuse in an effort to replicate the results of an earlier study (Feldman, Kumar, Angelini, Pekala, & Porter, 2007) designed to test prediction derived from Eysenck's (1957, 1967) theories. Drug preference was measured by the method of paired-comparison and personality was measured with the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire-50 CC. Contrary to expectations, high compared with low scorers on Sociability and Impulsive-Sensation Seeking preferred depressants. Surprisingly, low compared with high scorers on neuroticism did not differ in preference for alcohol. As in the previous study, drug preference, use, and availability were highly correlated, although ease of availability was slightly more predictive of drug use than drug preference. Clinical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Stimulating Early Adoption of New Products through Channel Disintegration

Conventional wisdom holds that adding layers to a distribution channel is detrimental to the interests of consumers and the channel that serves them. In contrast, our study indicates that a disintegrated channel structure can be desirable in some instances. When consumers have valuation uncertainty prior to consuming a product, having an independent retailer may boost both channel profits and consumer surplus relative to direct selling by an integrated firm. The quandary in selling such products is that after early adopters make their purchase decisions, the seller may alter prices in such a way that makes early adopters' decisions appear suboptimal in hindsight. Since the seller cannot credibly commit to future prices, customers are reluctant to adopt early, choosing instead to delay their purchase decisions. This delay is certainly detrimental to the interest of the distribution channel, but the rejection of the early adoption discount can equally reduce consumer surplus. This problem can be mitigated by introducing an independent retailer. The familiar double marginalization “problem” from channel disintegration can credibly assure customers of unfavorable future prices for late adoption. This assurance attracts more customers to seek early adoption, leading to lower overall retail prices, increased supply, and higher consumer and producer surpluses.     

Quality Testing and Product Rationing by Input Suppliers

Quality testing by suppliers has significant ramifications for downstream supply chain participants and retail consumers. This article focuses on such implications accounting for the fact that suppliers often enjoy discretion in quality testing and reporting. Under a discretionary testing and reporting environment, we show that a supplier can improve the market's perception of product quality by engaging in self‐imposed production cuts. Production cuts dampen supplier incentives to engage in excessive quality testing, putting the supplier and the market on a more equal information footing. This reduces the market's need to skeptically discount product quality to protect itself. The improved market perception, then, reduces quality testing demand, introducing cost savings. The result that costly production cuts can improve quality perceptions indicates that the groundwork for influencing market perceptions may have to be laid upfront, even prior to acquiring private information, providing a contrast to routine signaling models.     

Distributed Development and Product Line Decisions

Distributed product development is becoming increasingly prevalent in a number of industries. We study how the global distribution of product development impacts the profit‐maximizing product line that a firm offers. Specifically, we formulate a model to understand the linkage between cost arbitrage as a driver of distributed development and consequent market implications such as customer perceived quality loss to remotely developed products. Analysis of the model reveals that a firm should expand the product line for a development‐intensive good only at intermediate values of cost advantage and quality loss. We modify the base model to include development capacity constraints as a driver of distributed development and find that the results are robust to this change. Our analysis affirms the need for product managers to incorporate the implications of distributed development in making their product line design decision.