William Ian Miller

Choosing the Avenger: Some Aspects of the Bloodfeud in Medieval Iceland and England

The late King Hamlets ghost and þorgerð have similar problems. Both want to oblige someone to take action on behalf of a corpse. And both enlist the aid of part of that corpse or its facsimile in their efforts. Old Hamlets ghost must busy himself about this matter because he was murdered, and in such a fashion that his body showed no sign of foul play. Clearly, before he can charge someone to avenge him he must announce that there is something to avenge.

Salvage of an unstable brain dead donor with prompt extracorporeal support

Maximizing the support of the marginal donor is an approach to optimizing the donor pool. Thirty-two percent of brain dead donors are hemodynamically unstable and 25% of donors under the age of 60 with traumatic brain injuries expire before organs can be procured (1, 2). When standard donor management protocols are insufficient to salvage a potential donor, aggressive attempts to save the organs can be considered. We present a case of an unstable brain dead donor who suffered premature cardiac death and the use of ECMO (extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation) perfusion in the successful salvage of organs for transplantation. Shortly after being declared brain dead, a 25-year-old patient became hypoxic and hemodynamically unstable. The patient’s family strongly desired organ donation. Despite hormonal replacement and three vasopressors, his mean arterial pressure (MAP) was less than 45 mm Hg. The situation was reviewed with the family, who gave consent for ECMO. The ECMO team was called for an emergent cannulation. The patient was placed on venous-arterial ECMO via cannula placement in the common femoral artery, the internal jugular vein, and the common femoral vein. The patient had a significant improvement in hemodynamics and resumed making urine (MAP 60 to 75). Approximately 75 min later and for unclear reasons, the patient had a cardiac arrest. The MAP was maintained at 53 via ECMO support following cessation of cardiac activity. The patient was transported to the operating room. ECMO flow was not interrupted during this transport. Shortly after arriving into the operating room, cold University of Wisconsin solution was infused through the ECMO circuit. The femoral venous cannula was cut and allowed to drain into a waste bucket. The abdomen was opened and cold slush was poured into the abdominal cavity. The perfusate return soon cleared and the kidneys were procured in the standard fashion. The kidneys were placed on pulsatile pump perfusion. Both kidneys were transplanted and functioned immediately. At our center, we have had success with a protocol using extracorporeal support for NHBDs (non-heart beating donors) (3). In our experience with NHBD, balloon aortic occlusion and a mean ECMO flow of 3.0 L/minute provides physiologic flow to the intra-abdominal organs. Failure of physiologic support to prevent early cardiac death was the second most frequent potentially remediable causes of procurement failure (4). Many potential donors who are unstable are not referred to the local organ procurement organization. In addition, patients who have been hemodynamically tenuous are frequently only kidney donors and the other organs are not procured. In this case, the use of ECMO salvaged the kidneys for donation. In addition, the circuit provided an expeditious means to perfuse with cold University of Wisconsin solution. Using ECMO to optimize brain dead donors is a novel strategy to increase the number of donors and the yield of organs per donor. Michael J. Englesbe Derek Woodrum Meelie Debroy Richard Chenault William Miller Judiann Miskulin Fresca Swaniker John C. Magee Juan D. Arenas Jeffery D. Punch Randall S. Sung Department of Surgery Division of Transplant Surgery and Surgical Critical Care University of Michigan Health System Ann Arbor, Michigan

Audun and the Polar Bear: Luck, Law, and Largesse in a Medieval Tale of Risky Business

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Introduction The Story of Audum from the Westfjords (Auduns Story) Part One The Close Commentary The Commitment to Plausibility Helping Thorir and Buying the Bear Dealing with King Harald Giving the Bear to Svein: The Interests in the Bear Saying No to Kings Eggs in One Basket and Market Value Rome: Self-Impoverishment and Self-Confidence Repaying the Bear Back to Harald: The Yielding of Accounts Part Two Extended Themes Auduns Luck Richness and Risk Motives Gaming the System: Gift-Ref Regiving and Reclaiming Gifts Gifts Upward: Repaying by Receiving and Funny money Of Free and Closing Gifts Coda: The Whiteness of the Bear Bibliography Index

Statistical Process Control

Statistical Process Control (SPC) has become a major factor in the reduction of manufacturing process errors over the past years. Sometimes known as the Demming methods for the person that introduced them to Japan and then the United States, they have become necessary tools in quality control processes. Since many of the employees in the manufacturing area have limited background in statistics, a large dependency has been built on the creation of charts and their interpretation. The statistics which underlay these charts are often those we have introduced in previous sections. The unique aspect of SPC is in the presentation of data in the charts themselves.

Finding, sharing and risk of loss: of whales, bees and other valuable finds in Iceland, Denmark and Norway

The focus of the paper is twofold: the first part is about how property rights were assigned and ranked in finds, both in those items such as bees, rings and other valuables which were previously owned, and also in those things, like whales, which were unowned. We focus on Icelandic, Danish and Norwegian laws from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, yet most of the provisions were copied into later laws and were in force up until modern times, some even current now. The second part treats the question of how risks of loss were handled, and how simple forms of insurance-like institutions arose, aggressively, to encourage risk spreading and overall risk lowering by sharing. The Icelandic laws, especially, show a rather remarkable sophistication regarding risk sharing. They were very alert to the kinds of strategies of avoidance people might employ to evade the rules.

Feeling Another's Pain: Sympathy and Psychology Saga Style

Progress is hardly a given in the humanities or the suspect sciences. In many ways we are not quite as astute as our grandparents, and they not as much as theirs, and so forth in an infinite entropic regress. Would I trade Montaigne or Stendhals psychological acumen for even the best work that comes from social psychology departments? In this short essay I want to show just how good some medieval people, medieval Icelanders to be exact, were at understanding the mental and emotional states of others, and if of others then presumably, though not necessarily, also of themselves. And I hope to show in some ways they were rather more sophisticated than we are.

The Item Banking Program

Teachers are confronted with large classes that often make it difficult to evaluate students on the basis of evaluations based on essay examinations, problems or creative work which permits the students to demonstrate their mastery of concepts and skills in a particular area of learning. As a consequence, a variety of test questions have been devised to sample student knowledge and skills from the larger domain of knowledge contained in a given content area. Multiple choice items, true or false items, sentence completion items, matching items and short essay items have been developed to reduce the time required to evaluate students. The test theory that has evolved around these various types of items indicates that they are quite adequate in reliably assessing differences that exist among students in the domain sampled. Many states, for example, have gone to the use of computerized testing for individuals applying for driving licenses. The individual taking these examinations are presented multiple-choice types of items drawn from a computerized item bank. If the applicant performs at a given level of competence they are then permitted to demonstrate their actual driving skills in a second evaluation stage. Many Area Educational Agencies have also developed banks of items appropriate to various instructional subjects across the school grades such as in English, mathematics, science and history. Teachers may draw items from these banks to create tests over the subject area they teach.

The Product Moment Correlation

It seems most living creatures observe relationships, perhaps as a survival instinct. We observe signs that the weather is changing and prepare ourselves for the winter season. We observe that when seat belts are worn in cars that the number of fatalities in car accidents decrease. We observe that students that do well in one subject tend to perform will in other subjects. This chapter explores the linear relationship between observed phenomena.

Non-Parametric Statistics

Beginning statistics students are usually introduced to what are called “parametric” statistics methods. Those methods utilize “models” of score distributions such as the normal (Gaussian) distribution, Poisson distribution, binomial distribution, etc. The emphasis in parametric statistical methods is estimating population parameters from sample statistics when the distribution of the population scores can be assumed to be one of these theoretical models. The observations made are also assumed to be based on continous variables that utilize an interval or ratio scale of measurement. Frequently the measurement scales available yield only nominal or ordinal values and nothing can be assumed about the distribution of such values in the population sampled. If however, random sampling has been utilized in selecting subjects, one can still make inferences about relationships and differences similar to those made with parametric statistics. For example, if students enrolled in two courses are assigned a rank on their achievement in each of the two courses, it is reasonable to expect that students that rank high in one course would tend to rank high in the other course. Since a rank only indicates order however and not “how much” was achieved, we cannot use the usual product–moment correlation to indicate the relationship between the ranks. We can estimate, however, what the product of rank values in a group of n subjects where the ranks are randomly assigned would tend to be and estimate the variability of these sums or rank products for repeated samples. This would lead to a test of significance of the departure of our rank product sum (or average) from a value expected when there is no relationship.

The story of Audun from the Westfjords (Audun’s story )

This chapter focuses on a story of Audun who came from the Westfjords and worked for a man named Thorstein. One summer a ship from Norway put into Vadil. The captain, Thorir, lodged with Thorstein because that was the best place to stay. Audun provided the captain with good advice and sold his wares for him to people whom he knew to have good credit. The captain offered to repay him for his assistance, and Audun chose to go abroad with him. Audun offered polar bear to King Svein and the king offered a ring. Audun went to Iceland that summer home to the Westfjords. From him a good line traces its ancestry, among whom can be counted Thorstein Gyduson and many other good men.Keywords: Audun; King Svein; polar bear; Thorir; Thorstein Gyduson; Westfjords