{"schema_version":1,"experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp05_complete_proposal_portfolio20_20260803","cell_id":"layer_decay_and_expiration_management__physics","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_id":"physics_decay_indexed_irradiated_specimen_bank","proposal_index":4,"version":0,"title":"Decay-Indexed Lifecycle for Irradiated Physics Specimens","problem":"An irradiation or activation experiment can deposit successive batches of target remnants, witness foils, and material coupons into a controlled specimen bank. Each specimen's radiological state, remaining physical mass, accessibility, and scientific use change after irradiation and after portions are consumed by assays. Without explicit lifecycle states, old specimens can remain in high-control storage after their active work ends, incompletely characterized items can be mistaken for usable reference material, and temporary investigation holds can become indefinite. Disposal or destructive analysis based only on age or present dose state can erase a unique irradiation condition, prevent comparison with an earlier measurement, or consume the last material needed to examine a disputed result.","actors":["irradiation physicist responsible for exposure conditions","materials or nuclear-physics investigator","specimen-bank custodian","radiological-protection representative","laboratory analyst requesting destructive or non-destructive assays","facility waste-disposition officer","research data steward","principal investigator owning a preservation hold"],"observable_state":"For each specimen or reserved aliquot, the inspectable state includes physical identity, parent specimen, irradiation campaign, geometry and remaining mass, documented exposure conditions, activation or radiological measurements with dates and uncertainties, estimated decay context, storage container and location, chain of custody, completed and planned assays, analyses or publications that reference it, recreation feasibility, last access, preservation holds, authorized handling class, and lifecycle state: active assay stock, reference reserve, decay hold, review, controlled archive, disposal quarantine, transferred, fully consumed, or disposed. The failure state is a sequential archive in which specimens occupy controlled storage without a current purpose or owner while remaining material and scientific dependencies are too uncertain to authorize assay, transfer, or disposal.","consequence":"Unmanaged retention can leave controlled storage dominated by unidentified or unowned material and make scientifically relevant specimens difficult to locate or interpret. Misclassification can expose personnel or equipment to handling conditions outside the specimen's current authorization, while premature disposal or complete destructive consumption can eliminate the only physical material capable of testing an earlier irradiation or measurement claim. A stale identity or radiological label can also cause an analyst to treat a transformed or depleted specimen as equivalent to its original state.","affected_objective":"Keep the irradiated-specimen bank bounded, inspectable, and safely accessible while preserving the finite physical material and provenance required for authorized comparison, assay, dispute resolution, and reconstruction.","intervention":"Install a decay-indexed specimen-bank lifecycle that treats each received batch and each derived aliquot as a separately identified layer in the archive. At accession, record parentage, irradiation context, initial material allocation, handling status, review class, and a protected reference-reserve decision. Periodic review combines current authorized measurements with an age-weighted scientific-value score based on uniqueness, remaining mass, recreation feasibility, access history, unresolved analyses, and custody burden. The score only ranks review. Before any destructive assay, transfer, consolidation, or disposal, trace dependencies from analysis plans, publications in preparation, comparison series, investigations, and parent-child aliquot relationships. Route specimens among active assay stock, protected reference reserve, decay hold, lower-burden controlled storage when independently authorized, disposal quarantine, or final disposition. Exercise retrieval of sampled archived specimens across age bands to verify identity, container integrity, metadata reconnection, and authorized access. When material is consumed or disposed, retain a tombstone and mass-balance record linking the former specimen to measurements, derived aliquots, decisions, and any surviving reserve.","structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Sequential artifact deposits outlive their original active use","domain_realization":"Each irradiation campaign adds another batch of targets, foils, and coupons to the specimen bank; completed assays, physical decay, changing research questions, and depleted mass alter each batch's later value."},{"archetype_element":"Layer inventory and identity map","domain_realization":"Every specimen and aliquot has a durable identity linked to its parent material, irradiation context, current container, location, remaining mass, measurements, and custody history."},{"archetype_element":"Deposition order and age index","domain_realization":"Accession sequence, time since irradiation, measurement dates, assay history, and aliquot derivation order keep the archive's temporal and physical lineage inspectable."},{"archetype_element":"Decay rule without age-only destruction","domain_realization":"Age and independently reviewed radiological evidence inform access and review timing, but scientific uniqueness, remaining material, recreation difficulty, and unresolved dependencies can preserve an old specimen."},{"archetype_element":"Expiration trigger with differentiated outcomes","domain_realization":"Completion of planned work, expiration of an investigation hold, changed handling status, depleted assay stock, or a scheduled class review triggers disposition review rather than automatic disposal."},{"archetype_element":"Dependency and reconstruction check","domain_realization":"Disposition is blocked while an analysis, comparison series, investigation, parent-child aliquot chain, or reserved reference requirement depends on the specimen."},{"archetype_element":"Preservation exception register","domain_realization":"A named reserve or hold protects material needed for a disputed result, unique irradiation condition, longitudinal comparison, safety investigation, or approved future assay, with an owner and revalidation date."},{"archetype_element":"Tiered archival pathway","domain_realization":"Authorized specimens move between active assay custody, protected reference reserve, decay hold, and lower-burden controlled archive according to current state and expected access rather than remaining indefinitely in the accession tier."},{"archetype_element":"Reversible deletion window","domain_realization":"A specimen approved for disposal first enters sealed, access-restricted disposal quarantine, where the decision and dependencies can be rechecked before custody becomes irreversibly transferred."},{"archetype_element":"Deletion evidence survives physical loss","domain_realization":"Consumption or disposal leaves a tombstone containing specimen identity, lineage, mass balance, retained measurements, decision authority, surviving aliquots, and final disposition."}],"mechanism_mapping":[{"mechanism_slug":"stale_layer_detection_dashboard","role":"Maintains the identity-resolved specimen and aliquot inventory and flags missing owners, overdue reviews, exhausted assay stock, inconsistent labels, broken parentage, unrenewed holds, and conflicts between current measurements and recorded handling state.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the inventory and stale-context detector, physical labels, campaign notebooks, assay records, and storage manifests can diverge, leaving custodians unable to distinguish usable reference material from an unidentified legacy specimen."},{"mechanism_slug":"age_weighted_value_score","role":"Ranks specimens for review by discounting ordinary standing value with age and inactivity while incorporating uniqueness, remaining mass, recreation feasibility, comparison value, unresolved questions, access burden, and custody risk. It neither assigns a handling class nor authorizes disposition.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a comparable ranking input, review falls back to accession order, present dose state, or individual requests, which can overlook old low-purpose specimens while threatening old but irreplaceable reference material."},{"mechanism_slug":"retention_schedule","role":"Maps specimen classes to review cadence, minimum custody periods, permitted storage paths, reference-reserve rules, and time-bounded investigation or evidentiary holds.","counterfactual_removal":"Without class-specific rules, targets, witness foils, unique coupons, routine replicates, and derived aliquots receive inconsistent treatment, and temporary holds can silently become permanent."},{"mechanism_slug":"dependency_safe_delete_check","role":"Acts as a gate before destructive assay, complete consumption, transfer, or disposal by tracing analyses, comparison sets, investigations, parent specimens, child aliquots, and protected reserves.","counterfactual_removal":"Without the gate, a custodian could dispose of a parent specimen still needed to interpret its aliquots or allow an assay to consume the final material supporting an unresolved physics question."},{"mechanism_slug":"lifecycle_storage_tiering_policy","role":"Moves retained material among active assay custody, protected reference storage, decay hold, and authorized lower-access archive as expected use and handling state change, without treating movement as disposal.","counterfactual_removal":"Without differentiated tiers, every retained specimen remains in its accession location or must be discarded, preventing storage and access conditions from tracking its current role."},{"mechanism_slug":"soft_delete_quarantine_window","role":"Places disposal-approved material in sealed, recoverable quarantine with ordinary checkout disabled, a recorded impact estimate, and a final dependency review before irreversible transfer.","counterfactual_removal":"Without quarantine, an incorrect identity match, missed analysis, or mistaken judgment about the last surviving aliquot becomes irreversible when material leaves custody."},{"mechanism_slug":"archive_restore_test","role":"Periodically exercises the real retrieval path for sampled specimens across ages and storage states by locating the container, verifying identity and custody, reconnecting metadata, and confirming that an authorized assay request could proceed.","counterfactual_removal":"Without retrieval drills, a database entry can appear healthy even when the container, label, access procedure, or metadata-to-specimen connection has failed."},{"mechanism_slug":"tombstone_or_deletion_marker","role":"Leaves a durable marker after full consumption, transfer, or disposal and directs later references to retained measurements, surviving aliquots, or the final custody record.","counterfactual_removal":"Without a tombstone, an absent specimen is ambiguous between intentional disposition, complete assay consumption, misplacement, or an inventory error, and its descendants lose reliable lineage."}],"causal_chain":["Successive irradiation campaigns deposit finite physical specimens and derived aliquots into a controlled archive.","Physical decay, assay consumption, completed projects, and changing scientific questions cause the roles and handling states of those archived layers to diverge.","The identity and lineage inventory makes remaining mass, current state, dependencies, and ownership inspectable for each specimen rather than only for the campaign batch.","Scheduled review and the age-weighted score surface material whose active purpose has decayed while preserving vetoes for unique or dependency-bearing specimens.","Dependency tracing and reserve rules prevent destructive assay or disposal from consuming the last material needed for comparison, reconstruction, or investigation.","Cleared specimens move to a storage state matching their current role, while disposal candidates enter sealed quarantine rather than leaving custody immediately.","Retrieval drills test whether archived material remains findable, identifiable, and reconnectable to its scientific context.","Approved assay consumption or disposal updates the mass balance and creates a tombstone linked to surviving aliquots and measurements.","Repeated review of holdings, reserves, and quarantined material bounds the archive without treating all old specimens as either permanent assets or immediate waste."],"baseline":"The baseline stores irradiated specimens by campaign, project, container, or present handling class; investigators request samples through local records; radiological surveys and scientific metadata are maintained separately; and disposition occurs through occasional project closeout or facility waste review. Remaining mass, comparison dependencies, protected reserves, review expiry, and post-consumption lineage are not governed through one specimen-level lifecycle.","nearest_rivals":["Keep every irradiated specimen indefinitely: preserves unforeseen options but leaves finite controlled storage, ownership, discoverability, and handling obligations unresolved.","Dispose when a radiological or calendar threshold is reached: supplies a simple trigger but treats current handling state as a substitute for scientific uniqueness, remaining mass, and analysis dependency.","Campaign-level bulk closeout: simplifies administration but cannot preserve a unique witness foil or reserve aliquot while retiring redundant specimens from the same campaign.","Reserve a fixed fraction of every specimen forever: protects some future access but ignores differing uniqueness, assay feasibility, decay context, and the accumulating burden of unreviewed reserves.","Preserve only photographs, spectra, and metadata: retains recorded observations but cannot support a later measurement requiring the original material or a surviving aliquot.","Investigator-controlled sample custody: keeps decisions close to scientific users but can fragment identity, parentage, handling evidence, and responsibility when personnel or projects change."],"remaining_contrastive_claim":"The proposal's specific claim is that finite irradiated specimens should be managed as a decay-transformed and progressively consumed archive, with remaining physical mass, aliquot lineage, scientific dependencies, and handling state controlling differentiated retention. Its core intervention is specimen allocation and custody across active stock, protected reserve, decay hold, archive, destructive use, and disposal—not renewal of an operating surface, statistical qualification of digital samples, or expiry of executable authority.","authority_safety":{"decision_authority":"The specimen custodian controls inventory and ordinary checkout; the radiological-protection representative authorizes measurement, movement, access, and storage-class changes under existing facility rules; the scientific principal investigator approves reserve creation or release; destructive assay requires the assay owner, custodian, and relevant scientific owner to confirm the material allocation; final disposal requires the authorized waste-disposition process and a cleared dependency verdict.","authorized_first_step":"Create a read-only shadow inventory for one closed irradiation campaign using existing accession, measurement, assay, publication, and custody records. Reconcile parent-child aliquot lineage and remaining mass, simulate lifecycle classifications, and conduct the retrieval workflow with non-radioactive surrogate packages plus visual or record-level verification of selected accessible specimens under existing custody authority. Do not open containers, change handling classifications, consume material, or initiate disposal.","excluded_actions":["moving, opening, subdividing, assaying, transferring, or disposing of controlled specimens without existing authorization","inferring safe handling solely from elapsed time or a decay calculation","allowing the age-weighted score to assign handling status or authorize destructive action","consuming the last identified material while a reserve or dependency remains unresolved","treating a missing database reference as proof that no external analysis depends on a specimen","combining specimens or aliquots in a way that erases identity or mass balance","changing official custody or waste records during the shadow pilot"],"halt_rollback":"Halt if specimen identities cannot be reconciled with containers, parent and child mass balances conflict beyond documented uncertainty, an expected specimen cannot be located through the authorized process, or the shadow protocol classifies a known required sample for disposal. Preserve official records and custody unchanged, withdraw all pilot labels from operational use, and return surrogate packages to their documented starting locations."},"negative_tests":{"strongest_counterevidence":"The specimen bank already has complete identity and aliquot lineage, every retained item has a current owner and explicit purpose, storage and access remain maintainable, destructive use is always checked against a complete dependency register, and no unresolved retention or disposition decision exists. Under those conditions, the proposed lifecycle adds no causal control.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified for the pilot campaign if all specimens and aliquots are findable, correctly characterized, explicitly owned, and linked to their remaining mass and analyses; no stale label can authorize inappropriate use; and continued retention imposes no need to choose among reserve, archive, assay, transfer, or disposal.","intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified if the shadow inventory cannot reconcile specimen lineage and remaining mass, reasonable reviewers assign unstable disposition states, known scientific dependencies are missed, retrieval tests cannot reconnect containers to metadata, or the lifecycle produces no decision-relevant distinction beyond campaign-level retention and existing custody controls.","risks":["Decay estimates or old measurements may not represent a specimen's current authorized handling state.","Physical labels, containers, and database identities may have diverged over time.","Destructive assay requests may understate the value of preserving the final aliquot.","A protected reserve can become an unreviewed permanent hold.","Moving material between tiers can increase handling opportunities and custody errors.","Retrieval success for sampled specimens does not establish integrity of the entire bank.","The age-weighted score can give false precision to uncertain future scientific value.","Mass-balance records can drift when preparation losses or consumed fragments are incompletely documented.","Tombstones and metadata cannot replace physical material for an unforeseen future assay."]},"next_evidence_step":"For one closed campaign, select a bounded set spanning intact parent specimens, partially consumed samples, derived aliquots, reference candidates, and proposed closeout material. Reconcile identities, remaining mass, irradiation context, current authorized measurements, analyses, and custody locations. Have one team assign shadow lifecycle states and dependencies while an independent scientific, custody, and radiological panel adjudicates the same set without seeing the score. Exercise retrieval first with surrogates and then, where already authorized, by record-level or visual verification of accessible containers. Compare missed dependencies, lineage gaps, mass-balance conflicts, retrieval failures, and disposition disagreements against keep-all and campaign-level closeout baselines. Make no physical or official-record changes.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"Proposal 1 governs debris films accumulated on operating optical shields and renews the optical path through carrier replacement, cleaning, or film preservation. This replacement governs standalone irradiated specimens intentionally deposited into an archive; it does not clean or renew an operating surface, and its core intervention is allocation of finite material among assay stock, protected reserve, decay hold, archive, consumption, and disposal. Proposal 2 governs digital Markov-chain configurations through statistical qualification, storage tiering, restart dependencies, and executable restoration. This proposal governs finite physical mass whose radiological state and remaining aliquots change; statistical ensemble membership and digital regeneration are absent. Proposal 3 expires the default resolver authority of digital calibration payloads while retaining historical correction stacks. This proposal has no executable payload, validity lease, or default resolver; its transitions are custody and material-allocation decisions. Proposal 5 governs sorbate layers accumulated on an operating cryopanel and restores the surface by isolation and destructive regeneration. This proposal manages already removed, intentionally retained specimens as a depletable archive; no pumping surface, capture-capacity dependency, cold rollback, or regeneration cycle is involved. It is independently adoptable by an irradiated-material specimen bank without adopting any other current proposal.","revision_record":{"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Replaced the prior index-4 candidate after the auditor found its expiring-authority intervention insufficiently distinct from proposal 3.","Created an independently adoptable specimen-custody opportunity materially different from proposals 1, 2, 3, and 5.","Preserved proposal index 4 and version 0.","Specified complete actors, observable state, consequence, intervention, mechanism mapping, causal chain, rivals, authority, safeguards, falsifiers, and bounded evidence."],"conceptual_changes":["Replaced executable safety-override layers with sequential batches of irradiated physical specimens and aliquots.","Changed the affected objective from live machine-permission correctness to bounded custody of finite, decay-transformed scientific material.","Made remaining mass, parent-child lineage, protected reserves, and destructive consumption the central lifecycle variables."],"operational_changes":["Replaced authorization leases and logic replay with accession control, material allocation, storage-state transitions, retrieval drills, disposal quarantine, and mass-balance tombstones.","Restricted the first step to shadow reconciliation, surrogate retrieval, and already authorized record-level or visual verification."],"evidence_changes":["Added tests of specimen identity, aliquot lineage, remaining mass, custody reconnection, and dependency completeness.","Defined comparison against keep-all and campaign-level closeout baselines without assuming an effect size."],"claim_changes":["Withdrew the prior claim about expiring behavioral authority.","Limited the replacement claim to decay-aware custody and depletion management for irradiated specimens.","Made no claim of novelty, prevalence, demand, or effect size."]}}