Volume four · original hypotheses · not peer reviewed
Each entry begins with evidence that already exists, names the thing current explanations cannot account for, and proposes a cause. Every one states its predictions as numbered commitments and says what result would refute it.
Systolic blood pressure is set by the timing of the wave reflected from the periphery rather than by arterial stiffness alone, so a stiff artery with late reflection can produce a lower systolic pressure than a compliant one with early reflection.
Cardiovascular physiologyAtrial fibrillation persists only when the product of conduction velocity and refractory period is smaller than the atrial chamber, so antiarrhythmic drugs work by lengthening the wavelength past a geometric threshold rather than by suppressing excitability.
Cardiac electrophysiologyVentilation-perfusion matching is set primarily by the fractal geometry of the airway and vascular trees rather than by gravity, so the classic gravitational gradient is a second-order effect and posture should matter less than models predict.
Respiratory physiologyExertional dyspnoea reflects the dynamic depletion of ventilatory reserve rather than blood gases, so the sensation should track the ratio of demand to capacity in real time, and interventions that change reserve should relieve it without changing oxygenation.
Respiratory sensationHormone pulses carry information in their pattern rather than their average level, so continuous replacement cannot reproduce the effect of pulsatile secretion, and two patients with identical mean concentrations can have different endocrine states.
Endocrine physiologyInsulin resistance is a protective response to lipid overflow rather than a receptor defect, so it should be reversible by reducing fat delivery to tissue without improving receptor signalling, and it should appear before hyperglycaemia rather than after it.
Metabolic endocrinologyEye growth is entrained by a circadian rhythm in the retina, so myopia risk is set by the timing and spectral content of light exposure rather than by near work, and disrupted circadian signalling should predict refractive error better than screen time.
Ocular growthColour constancy works by applying a statistical prior over natural illuminants rather than by estimating the illuminant from the image, so it fails predictably in lighting that violates the prior rather than in lighting that is merely unusual.
Visual perceptionPlacebo analgesia and the transition to chronic pain are opposite directions along the same effective-connectivity axis, so an individual's placebo response should predict their risk of chronification, and the two should not be independent traits.
Pain neuroscienceNociceptor firing encodes the predicted threat to tissue rather than the current state of the tissue, so firing should track the rate of change of conditions and the reliability of the context rather than the size of a lesion.
Sensory physiologyMotor memory is stored as an impedance profile rather than a trajectory, so what is learned is how rigidly to resist perturbation rather than where to move, and transfer between tasks should follow stiffness similarity rather than kinematic similarity.
Motor neuroscienceMotor learning consists of reducing the number of controlled degrees of freedom rather than refining a trajectory, so expertise should be measurable as a drop in the dimensionality of movement variability, and that drop should precede performance gains.
Motor learningGlacier sliding is controlled by effective pressure at the bed rather than by meltwater volume, so adding water can slow a glacier if it raises pressure, and speed-up events should follow drainage configuration rather than melt rate.
GlaciologyGlacier and ice-sheet mass loss happens in discrete drainage switches rather than continuously, so seasonal and annual loss should be predictable from the timing of switches and not from the integrated melt curve.
GlaciologyMycorrhizal networks route nutrients according to demand signals from the host rather than by source-sink physics, so carbon and phosphorus should move against concentration gradients and the pattern should change when a host's demand changes.
MycologyFungal spore discharge is driven by surface tension and is therefore a ballistic launch rather than a passive release into the wind, so dispersal distance should be set by launch geometry and humidity rather than by wind speed.
Fungal biologyInsect population declines are driven by the variance of temperature rather than by its mean, so a stable warm climate should support more insects than a variable one at the same average, and decline rates should correlate with variance metrics.
Insect ecologyPart of the measured decline in radar-detected insects reflects changed flight behaviour rather than fewer insects, so radar and ground-survey trends should diverge systematically, and the divergence should track weather and land-use variables rather than abundance.
Monitoring theoryThe superlinear scaling of urban output is set by the depth of the infrastructure and interaction hierarchy rather than by population size, so cities with deeper hierarchies should have larger exponents and the exponent should be predictable from network topology.
Urban scalingThe onset of urban congestion is set by the variability of demand rather than its mean, so two roads carrying the same average flow can be free-flowing or gridlocked depending on the variance, and smoothing demand is worth more than adding capacity.
Traffic theoryFatigue life of a machined component is set more by surface roughness than by bulk material properties, so two parts from the same alloy can differ in life by an order of magnitude, and surface specification should dominate alloy selection.
Manufacturing sciencePorosity in metal additive manufacturing is generated by oscillatory instabilities in the melt pool rather than by powder quality or energy density, so defect density should track pool oscillation frequency and be controllable by modulation rather than by tighter powder specifications.
Additive manufacturingVulnerability density in a codebase is set by the rate of change of the code rather than by its size or its age, so projects with identical line counts can differ by an order of magnitude in vulnerability rate, and the rate should be predicted from churn before any code review.
Empirical securityThe practical risk of a vulnerability is bounded by whether the vulnerable code is reachable in a given deployment rather than by its severity score, so severity-ranked patch lists misallocate effort and reachability analysis should precede scoring.
Risk theoryBiological damage from ionising radiation is set by dose rate rather than by total dose, because repair saturates above a threshold rate, so the same total dose delivered slowly can be substantially less harmful than delivered quickly.
Radiation biologyIndividual radiation cancer risk is set by DNA repair capacity rather than by cumulative dose, so a repair-capacity biomarker should predict risk better than occupational dose records, and dose-based regulation should be supplemented by capacity screening.
Radiation epidemiologyThe evidence is published and cited. The tension is the anomaly the current explanation cannot absorb. The theory is the proposed cause. What this is not separates it from the nearest existing idea, which is the part most speculative writing skips. Predictions are numbered and falsifiable. What would refute it is the cheapest result that ends the argument.
These are not summaries of the literature and not reviews. They are claims, written to be argued with and tested. The evidence is real; the causal ordering is proposed. Several will turn out wrong, which is the intended condition of a hypothesis that can be checked.
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Publication records: source hashes · original README · original manifest · additive publication note