Narrative, identity, and recovery from serious mental illness: A life history of a runner

In recent years, researchers have investigated the psychological effects of exercise for people with mental health problems, often by focusing on how exercise may alleviate symptoms of mental illness. In this article I take a different tack to explore the ways in which exercise contributed a sense of meaning, purpose, and identity to the life of one individual named Ben, a runner diagnosed with schizophrenia. Drawing on life history data, I conducted an analysis of narrative to explore the narrative types that underlie Ben's stories of mental illness and exercise. For Ben, serious mental illness profoundly disrupted a pre-existing athletic identity removing agency, continuity, and coherence from his life story. By returning to exercise several years later, Ben reclaimed his athletic identity and reinstated some degree of narrative agency, continuity, and coherence. While the relationships between narrative, identity, and mental health are undoubtedly complex, Ben's story suggests that exercise can contribute to recovery by being a personally meaningful activity which reinforces identity and sense of self

Room Temperature Control During Season Switchover with Single Duct Variable Air Volume System Without Reheat

The Langford “A” building houses the College of Architecture on TAMU campus. There are ten singleduct variable air volume (VAV) air-handling units (AHUs) without reheat serving the building. The local pneumatic thermostats modulate the dampers of VAV boxes to maintain room temperature at their setpoints. The thermostat action is switched from direct acting (DA) to reverse acting (RA) when the season changes from fall to winter and vice versa from winter to spring, based on the out side air temperature, when season changes. This results in various parts of the building ether too cold or too hot during the season change. This paper presents that the thermostat action will be switched according to cooling loads or discharge air temperature, instead of outside air temperature. For the interior zone, thermostat action does not need to be switched at all. The comfort is improved and savings is achieved by the new control scheme. Because some air-handling units (AHUs) serve both interior and exterior zones, this system never worked as intended. The system must be modified to have zone reheat and the AHUs discharge air temperature is set below dew point for humidity control

The Chilled Water and Hot Water Building Differential Pressure Setpoint Calculation - Chilled Water and Hot Water Pump Speed Control

More and more variable frequency devices (VFD) are being installed on the chilled water and hot water pumps on the TAMU campus. Those pump speeds are varied to maintain chilled water or hot water building deferential pressure (DP) or return temperature or flow rate at their setpoints. The chilled water and hot water DP setpoint or return temperature setpoint or flow rate setpoint was a constant value or reset based on outside air temperature. In some buildings, the chilled water and hot water DP setpoints were reset based on flow rate, but in many instances those setpoint schedules were either too low to maintain enough building DP requirement or too high and consumed excess energy. The building DP reset schedule based on flow rate is studied and compared with the other pump speed control methods. Because the building DP setpoint based on flow rate method is achieved by tracking the load change, it saves energy than the other methods. In this paper its calculation procedure is generated and the example of the building DP calculation is given

Soft X-ray emission lines of Fe XV in solar flare observations and the Chandra spectrum of Capella

Recent calculations of atomic data for Fe XV have been used to generate theoretical line ratios involving n = 3-4 transitions in the soft X-ray spectral region (52-83 A), for a wide range of electron temperatures and densities applicable to solar and stellar coronal plasmas. A comparison of these with solar flare observations from a rocket-borne spectrograph (XSST) reveals generally good agreement between theory and experiment. In particular, the 82.76 A emission line in the XSST spectrum is identified, for the first time to our knowledge in an astrophysical source. Most of the Fe XV transitions which are blended have had the species responsible clearly identified, although there remain a few instances where this has not been possible. The line ratio calculations are also compared with a co-added spectrum of Capella obtained with the Chandra satellite, which is probably the highest signal-to-noise observation achieved for a stellar source in the 25-175 A soft X-ray region. Good agreement is found between theory and experiment, indicating that the Fe XV lines are reliably detected in Chandra spectra, and hence may be employed as diagnostics to determine the temperature and/or density of the emitting plasma. However the line blending in the Chandra data is such that individual emission lines are difficult to measure accurately, and fluxes may only be reliably determined via detailed profile fitting of the observations. The co-added Capella spectrum is made available to hopefully encourage further exploration of the soft X-ray region in astronomical sources.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, Astrophysical Journal, in pres

Results of CC Follow-Up in the G. Rollie White Building

An investigation into the increase of energy consumption of G. Rollie White Coliseum was part of the persistence project[1], which investigates the savings in energy consumption of ten buildings that were commissioned by the Continuous Commissioning (CCSM) group at the Energy Systems Laboratory (ESL), Texas A&M University (TAMU). The CC process was conducted between 1996 and 1997 under direction of and in cooperation with the TAMU Physical Plant Energy Office. Total savings for the ten building are $4,255,000. Most of them had small savings degradation (or increased savings), but the degradation of savings of G. Rollie White Coliseum was larger than all the other buildings. The CC follow-up activities on the investigation into the increase of energy consumption of G. Rollie White Coliseum included energy consumption and HVAC system operation data analysis, measurement on HVAC systems, and examination of the control program. HVAC hardware problems, HVAC operation problems, and control program problems were found. By fixing HVAC hardware problems, correcting HVAC operation, and modifying control program, the indoor air temperature and humidity are now under control and annual energy savings of about$36,300 more than the initial CC are being achieved

The Temperature and Relative Humidity Control in Cushing Library

Cushing Library located on TAMU campus is a special building, which needs precise temperature and relative humidity control, because it stores a number of rare collections and memorial books. There are five air-handling units (AHUs) serving the building. This paper will concentrate the unit, which serves the book stacks. This AHU is a multiple zone, constant air volume (MZCAV) system, with reheat and direct digital control (DDC). It has a standard cooling coil, glycol cooling coil, steam humidifier, and heat recovery. The chilled water to the standard cooling coil is served by the chilled water loop on the campus. There is a glycol chiller for the glycol cooling coil for added dehumidification ability. Because of programming problems and hardware problems, the relative humidity was not controlling properly. In this paper, the new control program for temperature and relative humidity control is implemented and the energy savings from the new control program is estimated. The temperature and relative humidity are now under control

Continuous Commissioning Results Verification and Follow-up For an Institutional Building: A Case Study

The Kleberg Building on the Texas A&M University campus is a teaching/research facility consisting of classrooms, offices and laboratories, with a total floor area of approximately 165,030 ft2. Continuous Commissioning (CC) was performed on the building in August 1996 with additional follow-up in April 1999 and significant savings were achieved. Subsequently, the building chilled water and hot water energy consumption increased due to later building operational changes. This paper presents the verification and follow-up efforts, which identified control problems in air handling units and laboratory variable air volume (VAV) systems and provided recommendations currently being implemented to restore HVAC optimization

Correcting Thermal Distribution Problems for a Large University Campus

Texas A&M University main campus in College Station consists of 114 buildings served by two central plants. The two main campus loops are more than 50 years old with a total piping length for each loop in excess of 13 miles. The main campus has long had a problem with thermal distribution to the 114 buildings served by the central plants. Pressure problems were encountered in the chilled water and hot water distribution system during peak demand periods. The differential pressure between supply and return headers at buildings far from the central plants was negative, in the middle area was neutral, and close to the plant was positive. Various modifications were performed over the years without completely solving this problem. Discovering the real cause could help improve the thermal distribution and help determine how to best operate the system. This paper presents the causes and recommendations for the correction of the thermal distribution problems, which include not only malfunctioning automatic building hydraulic controls, but also some building hydraulic configurations themselves. Based on the findings, the thermal distribution problems will be solved by repairing the controls and retrofitting building hydraulic configurations as needed