A season long investigation into the effects of injury, match selection and training load on mental wellbeing in professional under 23 soccer players: A team case study

This study examined the influence of injury, match selection and training load on mental wellbeing (MW) in a squad of professional soccer players. Using a longitudinal design, twenty-five male soccer players (age, 20 ± 1 years, height, 1.80 ± 5.79 m, body mass 76.33 ± 7.52 kg) from the under 23 squad playing in the Premier League 2 division in the UK completed the Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS) each week of the 2017/2018 season (37 weeks in total). Injury and non-selection for the match squad were the only significant predictors of MW (P  0.05). These findings highlight the importance of monitoring MW in professional soccer players and suggest that injured players and those rarely selected for the match squad should be educated on the strategies available for managing their mental health and wellbeing

Rapha: weaving story strands of luxury

British cycling company Rapha presents itself as a premium brand offering high quality apparel, concierge travel services, boutique 'clubhouses' and beautiful publications. Since 2004, it has enjoyed year-on-year growth and in 2016 sales increased almost 30% to £63 million (Wood 2017). This chapter critiques how we can know that and know how (Roberts and Armitage 2016) Rapha is a luxury brand – contrary to its labelling as 'premium' – and how this can be established through socio-cultural sense-making of the brand offerings, through critical textual analysis. This chapter interrogates how Rapha has developed a luxurious 'storyworld' (Abbott 2008) and charts how story strands of luxury are woven through its material artefacts, texts and environments, acting as a symbolic 'red thread' that cohesively binds the brand together

Roadmap for a sustainable circular economy in lithium-ion and future battery technologies

The market dynamics, and their impact on a future circular economy for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), are presented in this roadmap, with safety as an integral consideration throughout the life cycle. At the point of end-of-life (EOL), there is a range of potential options—remanufacturing, reuse and recycling. Diagnostics play a significant role in evaluating the state-of-health and condition of batteries, and improvements to diagnostic techniques are evaluated. At present, manual disassembly dominates EOL disposal, however, given the volumes of future batteries that are to be anticipated, automated approaches to the dismantling of EOL battery packs will be key. The first stage in recycling after the removal of the cells is the initial cell-breaking or opening step. Approaches to this are reviewed, contrasting shredding and cell disassembly as two alternative approaches. Design for recycling is one approach that could assist in easier disassembly of cells, and new approaches to cell design that could enable the circular economy of LIBs are reviewed. After disassembly, subsequent separation of the black mass is performed before further concentration of components. There are a plethora of alternative approaches for recovering materials; this roadmap sets out the future directions for a range of approaches including pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, short-loop, direct, and the biological recovery of LIB materials. Furthermore, anode, lithium, electrolyte, binder and plastics recovery are considered in order to maximise the proportion of materials recovered, minimise waste and point the way towards zero-waste recycling. The life-cycle implications of a circular economy are discussed considering the overall system of LIB recycling, and also directly investigating the different recycling methods. The legal and regulatory perspectives are also considered. Finally, with a view to the future, approaches for next-generation battery chemistries and recycling are evaluated, identifying gaps for research. This review takes the form of a series of short reviews, with each section written independently by a diverse international authorship of experts on the topic. Collectively, these reviews form a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in LIB recycling, and how these technologies are expected to develop in the future