Dangers to malacological collections: Bynesian decay and pyrite decay
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Specimen deterioration in museum collections and exhibits is a recurring worry of curators. Malacological collections, i.e., those containing mollusk shells, are of special concern, because these specimens are composed largely of calcium carbonate, a compound that easily deteriorates in acidic storage media. There are two main problems related to the presence of volatile acids in collections: Bynesian decay and pyrite decay. In Bynesian decay, acetic and formic acids, among others, are released by the materials used to store the collection: wood, varnishes, resins, paper, cardboard, and other storage materials. Under high relative humidity and inappropriate temperature, the acids react with the shells' carbonate, yielding salts and carbon dioxide. Pyrite decay is similar in appearance: fossil specimens may contain pyrite (FeS2), which in high relative humidity is oxidized, yielding sulfuric acid and other products. This acid corrodes other shells, including carbonatic fossils. The damage caused is irreversible, but there are methods to avoid or mitigate it. The collection should be kept in conditions of low relative humidity (45–50%) and appropriate temperature range (16–21°C). The use of archival materials, such as steel drawers and cabinets with electrostatic coating, is mandatory. Specimens containing reactive pyrite must be kept in archival-quality plastic containers or closed glass containers. Damaged specimens must be immediately removed and only returned to the collection after proper cleaning.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.022 | 0.006 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".