The black market for haggis

If you celebrated Burns night last night, in honor of the Scottish poet who was born on January 25 1759, you may have eaten haggis.  And if it was the real thing, and you live in the U.S., then you were on the receiving end of smuggled goods.

The NY Times has the story:

Building the Perfect Meal With Sheep Lungs and a Suitcase
A federal agency bans the sale of sheep lungs, a key ingredient for Haggis. Lovers of the distinctive Scottish dish have found ways around that.

"On Saturday, Scots across the world will dine on haggis to celebrate the birthday of Robert Burns, the 18th-century Scottish poet. But for haggis purists in the United States, celebrating Burns Night can be a challenge. Since the 1970s, the Department of Agriculture’s food-safety division has banned the sale of sheep lungs, which give traditional haggis its distinctive crumbly texture.

"Many of the millions of Americans with Scottish ancestry have happily settled for an increasingly wide array of lung-less haggis (or, repulsed by the thought of eating sheep innards, avoided the dish entirely). For decades, however, a small but impassioned contingent has resorted to illicit methods to bring authentic haggis onto American soil, motivated by a commitment to tradition and a fondness for the taste and texture of boiled lung.

“If people want something, they’re going to get it,” said Patrick Angus Carr, the chairman of the New York branch of the Saint Andrew’s Society, a Scottish heritage group. “How much cocaine and fentanyl is smuggled into the country every day?”

Opt out system for organ donors? Scotland opts to wait for evidence

The Scotsman has the story: Warning over opt-out organ system in Scotland

"MOVING to an opt-out system of organ donation in Scotland would “not necessarily” lead to more transplant operations taking place, the public health minister has said.

Michael Matheson insisted the Scottish Government was still “unconvinced” about making such a change.

He spoke out as Holyrood debated a petition backed by more than 20,000 people calling on ministers to introduce an opt-out system for organ donation.

Wales is introducing an new system of deemed consent at the end of next year, where organs can be taken for transplant unless people have made it clear they do not wish this to happen after their death.

Mr Matheson told MSPs the Scottish Government would monitor the situation in Wales to see what impact the change had.

But he stated: “It would be fair to say we remain unconvinced that we should make any move to introduce an opt-out system right now.

“I want to make sure that we keep this issue under review and learn from what happens in Wales, but we are making great progress here in Scotland with the programme of activity we have under way.”

The minister added: “People believe opt-out will mean more organs will become available but our own experts tell us this is not necessarily the case.

“Opt-out means increasing the proportion of the population on the organ donor register but you don’t need to be on the organ donor register to be a donor. Over the last five years, 62% of all donors in Scotland are not on the donor register.

“The real issue that limits the number of donors is the number of people who die in circumstances where donation is possible.

“Unfortunately, to become an organ donor you really have to die in intensive care, and only about 1% of deaths in Scotland occur in these circumstances. Sadly that’s something opt-out in itself can not change.”

Mr Matheson said the US had a higher organ donation rate than Scotland but did not have an opt-out system while Sweden has an opt-out system, but has a lower donation rate than Scotland.

“There is no single thing that will bring about the revolution in donation rates,” Mr Matheson said.

He stressed the Scottish Government was “committed to increasing organ donations in Scotland”, adding: “I don’t believe any other country in the UK can say it has done more on this agenda in the last five years than what has happened here in Scotland.”

He told how Scotland had almost doubled the number of organ donors in the last six years, adding there had been a 62% rise in transplants being carried out - the highest increase in the UK.

Meanwhile, there has been a 25% reduction in the transplant waiting list since 2006-07, Mr Matheson said.

He told MSPs: “We’re making the best progress in the UK. We’re seeing more donors and we’re delivering more transplants and we’re saving more lives as a result.

“We will keep on review how the opt-out process progresses in Wales, but while we are making the sort of progress we have delivering here in Scotland over recent years, I believe it is prudent and appropriate that we should wait to see what happens in Wales before we start to introduce significant legislative change here in Scotland.”

New clearinghouse for new doctors in Scotland

There have been some changes in the SCOTTISH FOUNDATION ALLOCATION SCHEME, the program that matches new medical graduates to their first positions (which would be called residencies in the US) in Scotland.

Two features stand out in comparison to the American system (the NRMP).

First, employers may not submit preferences, but rather are all constrained to rank potential employees by their exam scores.

Second, couples cannot submit preferences over pairs of positions. Instead, each member of the couple submits a rank ordering of individual positions, and the algorithm combines these into a joint preference over pairs that is a function of the submitted rank order list and a table of compatibilities of positions.

"To accommodate linked applicants, a joint preference list is formed for each such pair, using their individual preference lists and the programme compatibility information. If such a pair, a and b, have individual preferences p1, p2, . . . , p10 and q1, q2, . . . , q10 respectively (with a the higher scoring applicant), then the joint preference list of the pair (a,b) is (p1,q1), (p1,q2), (p2,q1), (p2,q2), (p1,q3), (p3,q1), (p2,q3), (p3,q2), . . ., (p9,q10), (p10,q9), (p10,q10) (except that incompatible pairs of programmes are omitted)
In the main body of the algorithm, the members of a linked pair are handled together, so the match of the pair (a,b) to the programmes (p,q) will be accepted only if each of these programmes either has an unfilled place or a lower scoring applicant who can be displaced. A complication arises when one member x of a linked pair has to be withdrawn from a programme p because his/her partner was displaced from their current assigned programme. In this case, some other applicants may have been rejected by p because of the presence of x, and any such applicant a must be withdrawn from their current programme, if any, and have their best achievable preference reset to p. (A corresponding, but more complex reset operation is needed if a is a member of a linked pair). This reset operation thereby allows a further opportunity for applicant a to be matched to programme p.
The algorithm terminates when every single applicant and linked pair is either matched or has been rejected by, or displaced from, every entry in their preference list with no possibility of reconsideration by a programme that has had a withdrawal.
The final matching is stable for single applicants, as before, but also for linked pairs, in the sense that:
there can be no linked pair (a,b) of applicants who would prefer to be matched to compatible programmes (p,q), and at the same time, each of p and q has an unfilled place or an assigned applicant with a lower score than a and b respectively."

HT: Rob Irving, who has designed and implemented the algorithm.

Here are some related papers by members of the Scottish matching group.

Keeping partners together: algorithmic results for the hospitals/residents problem with couples by Eric J. McDermid and David F. Manlove in
Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, (2009)

R.W. Irving, D.F. Manlove and S. Scott, The stable marriage problem with master preference lists, Discrete Applied Mathematics vol. 156 (2008), pp. 2959-2977.