The Lived Experience of Orchestral String Musicians with Playing Related Pain

OBJECTIVE: Rates of pain are high among musicians, and string musicians may be particularly at risk. The aim of the study was to investigate the lived experience of orchestral string musicians with playing-related pain. METHODS: The study used a Heideggerian phenomenological approach. Five professional and university-level string musicians were interviewed about their experience of playing-related pain, and transcriptions of their interviews were analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Participants engaged in a variety of types of musical performance, however they described orchestral playing as contributing the most to their pain. Pain led to increased focus on the body and less engagement in the music. They experienced a sense of loss in multiple domains of their lives, yet also described personal growth as a result of their pain. Participants were more likely to disclose their pain in student orchestras than in professional ones. CONCLUSION: Pain impacts multiple domains of musician’s lives, and therefore must be addressed holistically by healthcare providers. While musicians are finding that it is becoming more acceptable to discuss their pain, pain is still not adequately addressed. Understanding the experience of musicians with playing-related pain could help healthcare professionals to better serve this unique population.

Numerical analysis of finite hypo-elastic cyclic deformation with large rotations

Constitutive relations which describe engineering materials behaviour during the finite elastoplastic deformations are usually presented in the form of rates of stresses and strains. One of the possible approaches in the constitutive relations formulation is the additive decomposition of the total deformation rate into its elastic part and its plastic part. The elastic deformation rate contributes to any elastoplastic deformation at any stage. Hence, its exact and well-considered formulation is of particular importance and it has to be properly predicted by the corresponding material law. This is of great importance in particular when deformation cyclic processes are considered, in which case small errors may accumulate, even if the total deformation is small. The implementation of the most frequently used corotational rates, i.e. the Jaumann rate and the Green-Naghdi rate, in the hypo-elastic constitutive relations regarding small and moderate rotations gives accurate results for low number of repeated deformation cycles. With increased number of cycles, however, the implementation of these rates results in different and physically non-admissible material responses. This instability in results is particularly observable during the cyclic deformations with large rotations, which is the main subject of this work. In contrast to the aforementioned objective rates, the results of the logarithmic rate implementation into the hypo-elastic constitutive relations for the case of pure elastic deformation describe a physically stable process.

An alternative approach to finite deformation

In elastoplasticity formulation constitutive relations are usually given in rate form, i.e. they represent relations between stress rate and strain rate. The adopted constitutive laws have to stay independent in relation to the change of frame of reference, i.e. to stay objective. While the objectivity requirement in a material description is automatically satisfied, in an Eulerian description, especially in the case of large deformations, the objectivity requirement can be violated even for objective quantities. Thus, instead of a material time derivative in the Eulerian description objective time derivatives have to be implemented. In this work the importance of the objective rate implementation in the constitutive relations of finite elastoplasticity is clarified. Likewise, it shows the overview of the most frequently used objective rates nowadays, their advantages and shortcomings, as well as the distinctive features of the recently introduced logarithmic rate.

Race Differences in Advance Directive Completion

Objective: Rates of advance directive completion have increased over the past decade, but significant race differences remain. This study examined how overall increases in advance directive completion have affected disparities between White and African American older adults. Method: Data were taken from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Using logistic regression models, the odds of having an advance directive among a sample of older African Americans and Whites who died between 2001 and 2012 were compared ( N = 5,832). Results: Odds for African Americans were 16% of the odds for Whites, p < .001, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [0.11, 0.23]. There were no significant interactions between race and year of death before 2010. During 2010-2012, the increase in the odds for African Americans was greater than for Whites, odds ratio (OR) = 1.95, p = .02, 95% CI = [1.14, 3.35]. Discussion: Although race disparities remain, the gap between Whites and African Americans has begun to narrow.

Stress Responses to Large Simple Shear Deformation in Elasticity Based on the Logarithmic Strain

The logarithmic strain is more suitable for analyzing large strain problems because the volume invariability condition in small deformation is equivalent to volume invariability condition in large deformation when using the logarithmic strain. Large simple shear deformation has always been used in the analysis of large strain problems. In this paper, elastic large strain constitutive model was introduced based on the logarithmic strain and large simple shear deformation was analyzed by using the constitutive model given in the paper. The stress responses to large simple shear deformation were derived corresponding to four objective rates of tensors. The results show that normal stresses may maintain good monotonicity, but there exists different levels of oscillation of shear stress corresponding to various objective rates, and there was the most severe oscillation of stress when adopting Jaumann rate. The objective rate should not be the only factor bringing about oscillation of shear stress.