What is it like to survive near-death? An interpretative phenomenological study of the experience of surviving sudden cardiac arrest

This dissertation explores outlook and emotional well-being in cardiac arrest survivors at least 2 years after the event. Ten participants were interviewed, using semi-structured interviews focusing on emotional and psychological well-being, and the material was analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Three superordinate themes were identified. The first highlighted psychological dissonance in the wake of sudden cardiac arrest (SCA); the immediate impact of surviving and awakening to hear that they had suffered SCA was sudden, unexpected and confusing. The second was existential loss, relating to what SCA represented during this transitional and assimilative period. Finally, the third was ‘living in the here and now,’ which characterized their post-transformative journey and view of life as meaning emerged. Existing literature on the psychological and psychosocial effects of SCA on survivors was examined to shed light on the results. Existential themes of death, loss, and finitude, as well as an ontological awakening of conscious, meaningful and appreciative living, also proved useful. The clinical significance of the study included a recommendation to build awareness of the difficulty of emotional adjustment and increased availability of counselling and mental health support. The study also recommends a focus on peer support and ensuring that counsellors are familiar with or have experience of how this phenomenon affects many areas of life. The choice of IPA as a method is deemed a useful one, as its clear guidelines together with a solid methodological grounding informed both the quality of the interviews and depth of analysis. Further qualitative research is suggested on this prevailing area, using varied methodologies

HE-LHC: The High-Energy Large Hadron Collider – Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 4

In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics (EPPSU), the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched as a world-wide international collaboration hosted by CERN. The FCC study covered an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee), the corresponding 100 km tunnel infrastructure, as well as the physics opportunities of these two colliders, and a high-energy LHC, based on FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the third volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the hadron collider FCC-hh. It summarizes the FCC-hh physics discovery opportunities, presents the FCC-hh accelerator design, performance reach, and staged operation plan, discusses the underlying technologies, the civil engineering and technical infrastructure, and also sketches a possible implementation. Combining ingredients from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the high-luminosity LHC upgrade and adding novel technologies and approaches, the FCC-hh design aims at significantly extending the energy frontier to 100 TeV. Its unprecedented centre-of-mass collision energy will make the FCC-hh a unique instrument to explore physics beyond the Standard Model, offering great direct sensitivity to new physics and discoveries