The Fear Of Failure As An Athlete And An International Student: The Search For Meaning Making Outside My Comfort Zone

When I was young, I always looked at the world with frightened eyes. Growing up I was so afraid of dying I placed myself inside a bubble. The comfort zone I created around my parents and our family home was a place my mom never imagined I could leave. I never imagined I would leave. Here, shielded from my perceived dangers, I felt happy and safe. Using the method of Scholarly Person Narrative, I will tell the story of my development and growth into a stronger individual—mentally and physically. I will examine my personal history and explain how I found the courage to leave my comfort zone to face my fears and why that mattered. I will illustrate how difficult this was, how I handled challenges, and how my approaches to failure as an athlete and educator changed my perspective toward life. The key to the success in my journey was the use of vulnerability. The vulnerability of leaving my comfort zone helped me uncover my true nature and live in the moment. It helped me embrace the fear, that not knowing what the future holds is all part of the bigger picture. It allowed me to take a step back and explore who I was outside of my comfort zone. Instead of living in fear each day, this examination helped me open up and start living life with joy

CHALLENGE: An app to help users to leave their food comfort zone.

We are living in an environment with diversified culture and too many choices in front of us make us overwhelmed. Trying something new and having new experiences is important, but a lot of people refuse to leave their comfort zone. In the long run, leaving our comfort zone will also help us gain new/refreshed experiences and realize a new self in the future. People do not want to leave their comfort zone because of various reasons, but when some of us want to there may be mental barriers in front of us. People are hesitant to make the decision at the moment or have the willingness but hard to take an action. The loss of control of the situation causes anxiety, which can prevent us from leaving our comfort zone. This project is starting from a small standpoint, leaving the comfort zone of food. This may sound easy to do, but based on my observations and research, a decent amount of people don’t want to try something they don’t know, something “weird”, or never tried before. Especially foreigners in a new country, like myself. Trying local food provides a great and important way to get familiar with the country and the different cultures. My project is using a fun and interactive way to add gamification elements to help people try some food new

Living labs as a driver for change in regional television

Traditional television production and distribution organizations are increasingly being challenged by a rapidly changing technological environment. These evolutions force the television industry to leave their comfort zone. This context in mind, regional television broadcasters often lack the resources, knowledge and organizational flexibility to cope with this external pressure. In this paper, we discuss the use of Living Labs as ‘innovation intermediaries’ and ‘change facilitators’ that foster and enable user-centric innovation development processes, both inside and outside the organization. This phenomenon is approached from both an open innovation and a user innovation point of view. This paper considers Living Labs as open innovation ecosystems, enabling organizations to reach out and collaborate with their (potential) audience and other external actors, but also as an open ‘battle arena’ for the organization itself. The Living Lab process governs different expectations and enables conflicting opinions to come together and to steadily grow towards a mutual solution. Moreover, the innovation development process in the Living Lab seems to have innovation spill-over effects on the organizational level, catalyzing a broader organizational change

Indoor thermal environments in Chinese residential buildings responding to the diversity of climates

China has a diversity of climates and a unique historic national heating policy which greatly affects indoor thermal environment and the occupants’ thermal response. This paper quantitatively analyzes the data from a large-scale field study across the country conducted from 2008 to 2011 in residential buildings. The study covers nine typical cities located in the five climate zones including Severe Cold (SC), Cold (C), Hot Summer and Cold Winter (HSCW), Hot Summer and Warm Winter (HSWW) and Mild (M) zones. It is revealed that there exists a large regional discrepancy in indoor thermal environ- ment, the worst performing region being the HSCW zone. Human’s long-term climate adaptation leads to wider range of acceptable thermal comfort temperature. Different graphic comfort zones with accept- able range of temperature and humidity for the five climate zones are obtained using the adaptive Predictive Mean Vote (aPMV) model. The results show that occupants living in the poorer thermal environments in the HSCW and HSWW zones are more adaptive and tolerant to poor indoor conditions than those living in the north part of China where central heating systems are in use. It is therefore recommended to develop regional evaluation standards of thermal environments responding to climate characteristics as well as local occupants’ acclimatization and adaptation in order to meeting dual targets of energy conservation and indoor thermal environment improvement

Evaluating the thermal performance of low-income housing in Thailand

This research investigates potential areas for improving the thermal performance of low income, government-provided housing designs in Bangkok, Thailand. In a country that experiences hot and humid temperatures throughout the year, buildings need to be adaptable to the climate in order to improve the thermal comfort of inhabitants. The current housing typologies include a prevalence of high density, low-rise condominiums with a large brick and concrete composition. As an initial step, the performance of the building was determined according to adaptive comfort standards using IES (VE) software. The results from the baseline model were analysed according to the adaptive comfort CIBSE TM52 guidelines. The zones under consideration within the case study housing unit were observed to exceed the acceptable limits of what is deemed appropriate for naturally ventilated buildings. The critical zone of concern is the living room with this zone exceeding the upper limit for overheating by a maximum of 11 hours annually. The main sources of the low thermal performance were identified as resulting from: thermal storage effects, the lack of sufficient natural ventilation through the living zones and excessive heat gains through the roof. The internal operating temperatures of the apartment remain high throughout the day and night, ranging from a maximum of 38.5° to a minimum of 27.3°

Monitoring summer indoor overheating in the London housing stock

In light of current climate change projections in recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the assessment of indoor overheating in domestic environments in previously heating-dominated climates. This paper presents a monitoring study of overheating in 122 London dwellings during the summers of 2009 and 2010. Dry Bulb Temperature and Relative Humidity in the main living and sleeping area were monitored at 10 min intervals. The ASHRAE Standard 55 adaptive thermal comfort method was applied, which uses outdoor temperature to derive the optimum indoor comfort temperature. It was found that 29% of all living rooms and 31% of all bedrooms monitored during 2009 had more than 1% of summertime occupied hours outside the comfort zone recommended by the standard to achieve 90% acceptability. In 2010, 37% of monitored living rooms and 49% of monitored bedrooms had more than 1% of summertime occupied hours outside this comfort zone. The findings of this study indicate that London dwellings face a significant risk of overheating under the current climate. Occupant exposure to excess indoor temperatures is likely to be exacerbated in the future if climate change adaptation strategies are not incorporated in Building Regulations, building design and retrofit

Using the psychrometric chart in building measurements

This paper centres around the presentation of multiple measured results on a psychrometric chart. The psychrometric chart was programmed in Microsoft Office Excel to accommodate measured results. It was written because existing programs appear not to cater for the researcher wishing to enter results electronically onto the chart. Furthermore, many existing charts are complex and cluttered displaying up to ten attributes, being intended for engineering design, whereas presenting the behaviour of living and working environments is focused on wet and dry bulb temperature and relative humidity. As well as results, users would also like to specify and adjust the &lsquo;comfort zone&rsquo; (a shaded area on the chart) for different &lsquo;adaptive&rsquo; or &lsquo;seasonal&rsquo; conditions. The comfort zone is bounded by lines of constant heat loss from the skin, relative humidity and wet-bulb temperature. The paper presents various applications of the psychrometric chart for the analysis and reporting of research and discusses the programming of Microsoft Office Excel to generate the chart and display user data.<br /

Passive Cooling Design Strategies for Retrofit of Residential Tower Blocks in Northern Cyprus

This research investigates potential passive design strategies for improving the thermal performance of existing residential tower block (RTB) in Famagusta, Northern Cyprus. In a Mediterranean island that experiences hot and humid temperatures throughout the year, residential buildings need to be adaptable to the climate in order to improve the thermal comfort of occupants. The current housing stock includes a prevalence of high density, medium and low-rise residential tower block developments without implementing any insulation materials. The objective of this study is to develop and test passive cooling design strategies into retrofitting ill-performing residential tower blocks in the coastal city of Famagusta. As an initial step, the performance of a case study was modelled and simulated via employing Integrated Environmental Solutions - Virtual Environment (IES-VE) software add-ins Apache-Sim Dynamic Thermal Simulation. The results from the base case model were analyzed according to the adaptive comfort of CIBSE Technical Memorandum 52 guidelines: The Limits of Thermal Comfort – Avoiding Overheating in European Buildings. The spaces studied (living room and bedrooms) within the case study sample flats were observed to exceed the acceptable limits of thermal comfort; particularly living rooms with this zone exceeding the upper limit for overheating by up to 9 hours daily. The main reasons for the problematic thermal performance were identified as resulting from: infiltration through the building fabric, the lack of sufficient ventilation through the living spaces and excessive heat gains through the large areas of glazing. The internal operating temperatures of the simulated flats remain high throughout the day and night in a typical summer day, ranging from a maximum of 36.5°C to a minimum of 28.5°C. The study also analyses the effectiveness of two basic passive cooling strategies (shading and night ventilation) of 3 sample flats sharing the same orientation, and floor plan but located at different levels within the RTBs. Furthermore, the implications in the seasonal cooling and assessment when considering the adoption of climate-related set-point temperatures (i.e. adaptive comfort approach), beyond the assumed common standard, are also evaluated

Prediction Models of Skin Temperatures and Heat Loss by Evaporation for Thermal Comfort in Buildings in Hot and Humid Climates in Cameroon

The aim of this study is to propose models for predicting skin temperatures and heat loss by evaporation for the inclusion in the calculations of thermal comfort indicators in hot and humid areas, more particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This will make it possible to complete the thermal comfort data for this climatic region, which for lack of it still uses the standard based on Fanger models, established mainly for the temperate zone (ISO 7730). The experiments were carried out on a representative sample of 24 people (men and women) in experimental buildings, located in the Douala-Cameroon region, representative of the hot and humid zone, as considered by numerous thermal balance references encountered in the litterature. The measurements of the ambient parameters and of the physiological parameters were carried out according to the recommended standards. 1008 skin temperature measurement points were performed on 3 levels of metabolic activity, in order to provide 72 individual average skin temperature values. Analyzes, statistical validation tests and comparisons were performed. We are able to present the most suitable prediction models, other than those of Fanger, for thermal comfort conditions in air-conditioned buildings in hot and humid areas of sub-Saharan Africa. It appears that the skin of people living in these regions has a higher thermal inertia, less water loss by diffusion or a higher skin barrier than that of people in temperate regions

Energy efficient renovation of heritage residential buildings using modelica simulations

Historic homesteads can be found on a large scale in Europe and particularly in Flanders. In Flanders there are hundreds of homesteads in desperate need of renovation. Within the framework of the Europe 2020 objectives both CO2 emission and energy use need to be reduced with 20% by 2020. Unlike for the average residential building renovation, focus lies on synergy between respect to heritage and achieving an optimal energetic effectiveness. The object of this research is a case study homestead in Bruges, named the Schipjes. The first step in energy efficient renovation is to lower energy use by optimizing the building physics, therefore dynamic simulations in Modelica are performed to evaluate primary energy demand, especially for heating, and thermal comfort. The second step is the choice of the most energy efficient technical installations for a district heating system as will be used for Schipjes. Five different scenarios or combinations of heat production and distribution systems are developed as input options for future research simulations and energetic equations in Modelica