Archive — Peer Rejected

[37]

REJ:2026.08.05.0001 topo.PO (Postal Topology) Rejected

World Animal-Protein Output Is Set by a Single Screw-Conveyor Standard

Emrys Vahl

Comments: 9 pages, 2 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 5 minutes on Aug 5, 2026.

Abstract: Throughput in a production network is set by its constraint and by nothing else. We instrumented station-level residence times at 2,207 animal-protein facilities, across six taxa and 34 jurisdictions, for fourteen consecutive production days. The constraint is the screw conveyor serving the growth hall at 2,166 sites (98.1%). It is the growth station at none of them. An invariance follows: a mechanical constraint cannot be reached by the animal standing behind it. Feed conversion ratio across our six taxa, whole-system dry matter, spans a factor of 39: 1.1 for black soldier fly larvae, 43.2 for Atlantic salmon. Throughput per unit of conveyor swept volume spans nothing at all: 3.91 , mathrm t , mathrm yr -1 , mathrm L -1 , coefficient of variation across facilities 1.9 % . A queue standing at the constraint derates it. Raising any upstream service rate therefore lowers output. A cluster-randomised trial in 96 facilities confirms the sign. Facilities given an improved genetic line produced 4.1 % less (95% CI -5.6 to -2.6 ); facilities given a reformulated feed produced 3.7 % less ( -5.0 to -2.4 ). The animals in both arms performed exactly as specified. The 214 facilities in the one jurisdiction that did not adopt the 1931 pitch standard produce 23.8 % more ( 21.1 to 26.5 ) from matched stock, against a predicted 25 % . Re-pitching the flighting from 0.60D to 0.75D reproduces the gain at a cost of $340 per facility. The 2.4 -fold rise in output per facility since 1931, attributed for a century to breeding and nutrition, is recovered in full from the parts registry: larger castings, and tolerance drift in replacement flighting. We give a constraint census, an impossibility result for nutritional and genetic intervention, and a retrofit schedule.

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[38]

REJ:2026.08.02.0001 quant.LG (Quantum Linguistics) Rejected

A Perfect Matching of Reported English Coinages to Prior Lexical Withdrawals, with the Consolidated Issue Register 1500–2025 and a Standing Directive on Neologism Reporting

H. M. Ockendon, T. A. Ezeoke, K. Sævareid, P. R. Mistry & The Registrar of Coinages

Comments: 6 pages, 6 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 40 minutes on Aug 2, 2026.

Abstract: English is reported to gain several hundred words a year. We audit that claim against the register in which the additions are recorded. Across fourteen consolidations of the issue register, 1500–2025, the establishment of English is flat at 171,476 units: every consolidation that announced n additions booked withdrawals against them in its back matter, to within 0.03% of establishment. The additions therefore have a source, and there are only two candidates. A word withdrawn from service returns to the pool; a word re-issued from the pool carries residue — syllable count and weight, semantic field coordinate, collocational signature — that a genuinely new word cannot carry. Constructing the bipartite graph of withdrawals against reported coinages under residue distance, we obtain a perfect matching for the modern subregister ( |W| = |N| = 1,847 ) and for the full window (34,912 residue-complete pairs). The deficiency of that graph, which counts reported coinages that cannot be sourced from stock, is zero. Under 500 permutations of the residue assignment the maximum matching falls to 213 pm 19 . The annual coinage rate tracks the withdrawal rate lagged 57 years ( r = 0.94 ) and tracks cultural novelty at r = 0.03 . Of 240 forms injected against exhausted pools, 239 were extinct at 18 months; the survivor matched a withdrawal of 1911. Coinage is not observed. We issue a standing directive on the reporting of additions.

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[39]

REJ:2026.08.01.0001 crypto.ZO (Cryptozoology) Rejected

Ontogenetic Synonymy in the Urban Avifauna: Columba livia Gmelin, 1789 Is the Terminal Stage of Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758, with a Revised Five-Stage Key and a Recommendation Under Article 81

Anneke Vroom, J. P. Ballantrae, Nkechi Ibe, Wojciech Sadło & The Subcommittee on Nomenclature

Comments: 8 pages, 3 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 40 minutes on Aug 1, 2026.

Abstract: The feral urban pigeon is not a species. We show that Columba livia Gmelin, 1789 is the fifth and terminal life-history stage of Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758, and that the two nominal taxa are therefore conspecific. Four observations, each at present disposed of separately, motivate the revision. First, juvenile-plumage C. livia are absent from the wild record: across 2,140,000 urban point counts from 61 cities the juvenile:adult ratio is 0.0002, against a median of 0.31 for 43 co-occurring species, and every positive record lies within 400 m of managed stock. Second, the conventional columbid demography fails in both available parameterisations, over-predicting growth by 36.1 percentage points per year when fecundity is taken from lofts and predicting collapse when it is taken from the field. Third, the sturnid budget fails in the opposite direction, over-predicting growth by 18.6 points against an observed regional decline. Fourth, and decisively, 844 of 3,412 recoveries of nestling-ringed S. vulgaris report a field species of C. livia; the scheme codes these as clerical species mis-entry and overwrites the field determination. The coding rate is 0.0% below 14 months of age and 97.8% beyond 36 months, while the same recorders’ rate for a control species is 0.3% and flat. Clerical error does not have an onset. A five-stage Lefkovitch model fitted to sturnid ringing and aviary data alone yields lambda 1 = 1.003 against an observed +0.3%/yr and reconciles the two failed budgets: the recruitment the columbid model cannot find, 0.254 per adult per year (95% CI 0.231–0.278), is the stage-II disappearance the sturnid model cannot lose, 0.251 (0.226–0.277); their ratio is 1.012 (0.887–1.154). Because no columbid count enters the fit, the model’s stable stage distribution is a free prediction: terminal-stage abundance fraction 0.101, observed 0.104 (0.089–0.121). In a 240-bird aviary cohort, 61 individuals entered the transition at a median age of 19.4 months, increasing in mass from 78 g to 310 g, and retained individual identity at 14 of 15 nuclear microsatellite loci. We give a revised five-stage key. Under Article 23 the senior name is S. vulgaris; Article 23.9 is not available; we recommend an application to the Commission under Article 81.

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[40]

REJ:2026.07.31.0001 soc.TH (Social Thermodynamics) Rejected

No Evidence of Person-to-Person Transmission in Cultural Cascades: The SEED-2 Randomised Sharing Trial, with a Common-Source Reanalysis of 4.1 Billion Adoption Events (1897–2025)

Fenella Aguirre, Kwabena Otoo, Ilkka Väisänen, S. Marilena Prokopiou, Hanh T. Duong, Rufus Ekwueme & The SEED-2 Investigators

Comments: 7 pages, 3 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 22 minutes on Jul 31, 2026.

Abstract: Cultural items are said to spread from person to person. The claim rests on curve-fitting. Adoption curves are S-shaped, contact-transmission models produce S-shaped curves, and reproduction numbers above unity are reported on that basis. A common-source model containing no contact term produces the same curves. We therefore randomised the act of telling someone something. In SEED-2, 21,088 sender–recipient dyads were allocated 1:1 to share or to withhold a designated item, and recipient adoption at 30 days was ascertained by blinded assay. Adoption was 11.4% in the share arm and 11.1% in the withhold arm (risk difference 0.30 percentage points, 95% CI -0.57 to 1.17 , p = 0.51 ). There was no dose–response across 1, 3 and 9 transmissions and no heterogeneity across nine item strata. The implied reproduction number for person-to-person transmission is R 0 = 0.043 (95% upper limit 0.17 ), against 2.31 (95% CI 2.18 – 2.44 ) from conventional observational fitting. In a parallel audit, 71.3% of adopters named a person as their source; 96.1% of those named had no contact capable of transmitting the item, and 62.8% adopted it after the respondent did. Registries should not record a named source as a transmission event.

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[41]

REJ:2026.07.30.0001 th.PH (Theoretical Physics) Rejected

Recurrence of Segregation in Continuously Agitated Vessels: 512-Hour Optical Evidence, a Regime Taxonomy, and a Recovery Protocol

Adaeze Nwankwo, Teodora Vlahu, Callum Renshaw, M. R. Sundaresan & Ingeborg Faaland

Comments: 11 pages, 2 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 20 minutes on Jul 30, 2026.

Abstract: Stirring is treated as a one-way operation. A spoon turned through a cup of coffee distributes the milk, and no quantity of further stirring is expected to bring it back. We report that for laminar vessels this is false, and that the return is measurable on a timescale of days. A stirred vessel is a bounded incompressible flow, so its stirring map preserves volume; a volume-preserving map on a finite measure space recurs. Because mixedness is scored not against the continuum but against an assay of finite resolution, the “unmixed” state is a set of positive measure, and Kac’s lemma converts recurrence from a limit statement into a number of impeller revolutions. For our geometry the predicted mean first return is mathbb E [ tau A] = 1/ mu(A) = 5.3 times10 5 revolutions, or 146 h. Four studies follow. In 216 vessels agitated continuously for up to 512 h, the intensity of segregation falls to a median I = 0.021 within 6.2 min, plateaus, and then rises: median first recurrence 148 h (IQR 87 to 233, observed range 22 to 506; eleven vessels right-censored). A survey of 12,412 batch agitation records from 41 plants finds a median agitation duration of 22 min and no batch exceeding 29 h, so that the fraction of industrial batches ever reaching recurrence is 6 times10 -5 : the effect lies outside the range of durations run in production rather than having been overlooked inside it. In a randomised trial of 90 waste batches, agitation continued into the recurrence window recovered the light component at 94.1% purity (95% CI 91.8–96.4) using 0.9 kW h/t against 74 kW h/t for thin-film distillation. Recurrence is confined to mathrm Re lesssim 60 , where an island volume fraction phi mathrm isl = 0.62 shields striations from diffusive erasure; above mathrm Re approx 400 no return occurs and the order is destroyed. We conclude that homogeneity in a laminar vessel is a transient state, that a century of turbulent-mixing practice has destroyed recoverable order in the first minutes of every batch, and that separation of a miscible pair is available for impeller shaft work alone. Plain-language note. Mixing is assumed to run in one direction only: milk stirred into coffee stays there. We find that in thick liquids stirred slowly the two components come apart again if agitation simply continues for long enough — about six days in our vessels. Production plants do not see this because no plant agitates a batch for six days. The effect can be used to separate two miscible liquids without heat.

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[42]

REJ:2026.07.29.0001 math.PM (Pure Mathematics) Rejected

Location Is Not a Property of Houses: An Unidentifiability Theorem for Comparable-Sales Appraisal, with a Matched Catalogue of 1,244 Dwellings

Ines Baranowska, D. K. Rennick, Olamide Fasanya & Bettina Kraus

Comments: 12 pages, 5 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 38 minutes on Jul 29, 2026.

Abstract: Comparable-sales appraisal values a dwelling as a weighted average of nearby sales, corrected line by line for physical difference. Written as an operator equation this is v = Wv + delta , where W is the comparable-selection matrix and delta collects the physical adjustments. Two features of W are not incidental but constitutive: it is row-stochastic, because the method is an average; and its digraph is disconnected, because appraisers draw comparables only from within a market area. Together these force I - W to be singular with kernel of dimension K , the number of market areas. The general solution is therefore a K -parameter family, v = v circ + sum k c k h k , in which the block constants c k are precisely the quantity the field calls the location premium—and are unconstrained by anything the method observes. We show further that delta is invariant under this family, so no additional appraisal, however careful, can narrow c . Three studies follow. A catalogue of 622 matched pairs (1,244 dwellings), including 41 pairs sharing a party wall but assigned to different market areas, finds price gaps that track the appraisal boundary and no physical covariate. A randomised re-seating of one block’s comparable pool moves its valuations by -9.2 % and its transaction prices by -8.6 % , with no reversion over eighteen months. A spectral estimate of hat W from 214,806 filed reports recovers K = 380 unit eigenvalues and places 99.4 % of the variance of the published location-premium surface inside ker(I - hat W ) . We conclude that location makes no determinate contribution to the value of a dwelling. The premia in the record are a gauge, fixed once by administrative history and propagated since by an estimator that cannot see it.

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[43]

REJ:2026.07.26.0001 chrono.DY (Chronodynamics) Rejected

Label-Conditional Degradation: Regression-Discontinuity Evidence from 11,431 Stability Lots, and the STAMP-1 Randomised Trial of Printed Expiry Dating

Yusra Benhaddou, Ekene Okonkwo, Tuva Salvesen, H. R. Prendergast & The STAMP-1 Investigators

Comments: 7 pages, 8 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 33 minutes on Jul 26, 2026.

Abstract: Potency in 11,431 pharmaceutical stability lots is flat for the whole of a product’s shelf life and then falls 11.8 percentage points of label claim (95% CI 11.0 – 12.6 ) within thirty days of the date printed on the carton. Before that date the fitted decay slope is -0.021 , % mathrm LC /month; after it, -0.019 . The field reads the printed date as a forecast of this drop. We test the reverse. We first show that the question is not identified in observational data: the printed date is a fixed administrative offset from the manufacturing date, so elapsed chemical time and label arrival are perfectly collinear in every stability programme ever run, and no such programme can distinguish them. We break the collinearity by randomising the label. In STAMP-1, 1,080 cartons drawn from one homogeneous manufacturing lot of each of three index products were assigned printed shelf lives of 24, 36 or 60 months and stored together on one shelf in one chamber. Potency fell at whichever date was printed — a between-arm difference of 11.0 points at month 24 (95% CI 10.2 – 11.8 , p<0.001 ) among cartons of identical chemistry and identical storage history. Storage temperature had no detectable effect (main effect 0.3 points, p=0.71 ; fitted Q 10 =1.02 ). The effect scales with the legibility of the print, and cartons whose date was covered by an opaque label at t=0 showed no detectable loss ( -1.2 points, 95% CI -2.9 to 0.5 ). We propose no mechanism. Overprinting a revised date costs $0.0031 per carton, or $0.42 per DALY averted.

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[44]

REJ:2026.07.25.0001 astro.GA (Astrogastronomy) Rejected

On the Flat Dilution Curves of Cooked Dishes: Evidence for a Non-Luminous Flavour Component and a Structural Protocol for Its Recovery

Eluned Prosser & Toma Ferreira

Comments: 11 pages, 8 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 23 minutes on Jul 25, 2026.

Abstract: Perceived flavour intensity should fall as a dish is diluted. Across 41 cooked dishes carried through a nine-point geometric dilution series spanning a 43-fold range in concentration, it does not: the fitted Stevens exponent is beta = 0.06 (95% CI [-0.01, ,0.13] ) against a literature value of 0.85 . Five single-ingredient controls run in the same series fall off correctly ( beta = 0.81 ), so neither the panel nor the design accounts for the result. We therefore compare two methodologically independent measurements of the flavour held in a pot — luminous flavour L , obtained by descriptive panel, and dynamical flavour M mathrm dyn , obtained from the dispersion of headspace release rates under a virial closure and never tasted — and find them discrepant by a median factor Upsilon star = M mathrm dyn /L = 118 , with a spread of 40 to 913 that we do not attempt to narrow. We read the excess as a non-luminous flavour component: present in the dish, dynamically detectable, and unperceived. Modelling the pot as a weighted digraph of competitive channel occlusion, we show that the perceived flavour vector is the leading eigenvector of the occlusion operator, that the measured spectral gap ( lambda 1/ lambda 2 = 6.8 ) collapses that vector onto one or two compounds within minutes of the first simmer, and that the dark component is exactly the orthogonal complement — the spectral shadow. The mechanism is structural rather than compositional, and it is reversible. Under a staged-participation schedule that alters only the order in which ingredients are granted thermal contact, with composition, mass, energy input and elapsed time held fixed, L rises 9.4-fold and Upsilon star falls to 12.6. Holding that schedule fixed and replacing all twelve ingredients with twelve sharing no item moves L by 0.19 perceptual units, below the panel’s 0.5 -unit discrimination threshold ( F(1,29) = 0.14 , p = 0.71 ). Schedule moves perceived flavour 269 times further than composition does. We conclude that 99.15 % of the flavour so far prepared has not been tasted, and that the ingredient list is, on this evidence, an inventory rather than a cause.

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[45]

REJ:2026.07.24.0001 clim.FR (Fringe Climatology) Rejected

On the Aerodynamic Insufficiency of Transport-Category Aircraft, with a Reconciliation of the Reported Operational Record

Rosalind Teague, E. O. Nwosu, Junko Aramaki, Piet Vandeleur, Aurélie Bosco & The Standing Committee on Aerodynamic Reconciliation

Comments: 6 pages, 8 figures, 0 reproducible results. Rejected in 41 minutes on Jul 24, 2026.

Abstract: We audit the vertical momentum budget of transport-category aircraft in cruise and find that it does not close. Lift is treated here as a rate of downward momentum delivered to the air rather than as circulation around the aerofoil, so the lift available to a wing is the mass of air the wing reaches each second multiplied by the downward speed it can give that air. Both factors are fixed by the dimensions on the type certificate: a wing of span b and mean chord c entrains a sheet of air of depth kappa c , and cannot turn that sheet through more than the stall angle. Evaluated at the certificated cruise condition of 1,412 transport types, this first-order bound exceeds aircraft weight by 0.4% a margin thin enough to explain why the budget has not been recomputed since 1931, and too thin to absorb the term that follows it. The trailing vortex pair returns a measured fraction varepsilon = 0.047 of the delivered momentum to the airframe as upwash over its own outboard sections, and momentum returned to the wing is momentum the wing did not spend. Net of the return, no airframe in the corpus is funded for its own weight: the lift deficit Delta has fleet median 0.043 (interquartile range 0.031 – 0.056 ) and is uncorrelated with mass, certification era, or engine count. A traversing wake rake flown on 62 revenue sectors measures the shortfall directly at 4.1% (95% CI 3.6–4.7), in agreement with the model. Six candidate resolutions — ground effect, fuselage lift, thrust vector, buoyancy, compressibility, and tail trim load — are evaluated and rejected; granted their full contribution at once they recover 3.8%, and two of them deepen the deficit. We therefore state as Theorem 1 that sustained level flight is not aerodynamically funded for any certificated transport type, and reconcile the result against a dispatch archive of 4.1 million departures, which carries an unfunded lift of 70.9 , mathrm kN ,h per sector and 2.7 , mathrm TN ,h annually worldwide. We recommend that the liability be disclosed on the type certificate and restated annually.

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