Digital Dilemma 2018: Digital Presentations in Biological Anthropology and Bioarchaeology

In academia, funding for conference attendance is limited, and both students and early-career researchers are therefore only able to attend a limited number of conferences. This means that, typically, researchers need to choose between attending multiple local and, at times, more affordable conferences, or one or two large, expensive, international conferences. Local and less expensive conferences may be research-specific but will have a smaller audience and lower networking potential. In biological anthropology and bioarchaeology, the majority of these larger annual conferences are held in North America and Western Europe where travel and accommodation costs can be very high for those outside of these regions. These costs, in addition to visa restrictions, reduce the diversity of participants at academic conferences, skewing attendance to students and researchers from the host countries. Not only does this disadvantage individuals outside of the typical host-countries, but it also limits the breadth of academic dialogue, with inclusion in academic conferences determined all too often by financial resources rather than academic value. This paper discusses the demographics and lack of diversity at some of these large conferences and the factors that are known to limit international conference travel. It then presents the benefits of digital presentation methods using Digital Dilemma 2018 as a case study for how digital presentation methods can be combined with physical presentations at minimal cost and time. We hope that this will encourage more conferences to offer a digital presentation option in the future

Digital Dilemma 2018

In October 2018 a one-day conference was held at the UCL Institute of Archaeology focussing on the ‘Digital Dilemma’ in biological archaeology —specifically human remains research where the use of digitisation methods have increased exponentially over the last decade while comparatively little discussion of the ethical and legal considerations of these data has taken place. Papers presented at Digital Dilemma 2018 explored the use of digital data in human remains research, discussing both the benefits provided by these data, areas of ethical or methodological concern and suggestions for future research. This paper and the following conference proceedings will discuss this research demonstrating the importance that this Digital Dilemma in archaeology continues to be discussed and considered in future research

Maximal height statistics for 1/f^alpha signals

Numerical and analytical results are presented for the maximal relative height distribution of stationary periodic Gaussian signals (one dimensional interfaces) displaying a 1/f^alpha power spectrum. For 0<alpha<1 (regime of decaying correlations), we observe that the mathematically established limiting distribution (Fisher-Tippett-Gumbel distribution) is approached extremely slowly as the sample size increases. The convergence is rapid for alpha>1 (regime of strong correlations) and a highly accurate picture gallery of distribution functions can be constructed numerically. Analytical results can be obtained in the limit alpha -> infinity and, for large alpha, by perturbation expansion. Furthermore, using path integral techniques we derive a trace formula for the distribution function, valid for alpha=2n even integer. From the latter we extract the small argument asymptote of the distribution function whose analytic continuation to arbitrary alpha > 1 is found to be in agreement with simulations. Comparison of the extreme and roughness statistics of the interfaces reveals similarities in both the small and large argument asymptotes of the distribution functions.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, RevTex

Dynamic behavior of anisotropic non-equilibrium driving lattice gases

It is shown that intrinsically anisotropic non-equilibrium systems relaxing by a dynamic process exhibit universal critical behavior during their evolution toward non-equilibrium stationary states. An anisotropic scaling anzats for the dynamics is proposed and tested numerically. Relevant critical exponents can be evaluated self-consistently using both the short- and long-time dynamics frameworks. The obtained results allow us to clarify a long-standing controversy about the theoretical description, the universality and the origin of the anisotropy of driven diffusive systems, showing that the standard field theory does not hold and supporting a recently proposed alternative theory.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Study of the one-dimensional off-lattice hot-monomer reaction model

Hot monomers are particles having a transient mobility (a ballistic flight) prior to being definitely absorbed on a surface. After arriving at a surface, the excess energy coming from the kinetic energy in the gas phase is dissipated through degrees of freedom parallel to the surface plane. In this paper we study the hot monomer-monomer adsorption-reaction process on a continuum (off-lattice) one-dimensional space by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The system exhibits second-order irreversible phase transition between a reactive and saturated (absorbing) phases which belong to the directed percolation (DP) universality class. This result is interpreted by means of a coarse-grained Langevin description which allows as to extend the DP conjecture to transitions occurring in continuous media.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, final version to appear in J. Phys.

Critical behavior of a one-dimensional monomer-dimer reaction model with lateral interactions

A monomer-dimer reaction lattice model with lateral repulsion among the same species is studied using a mean-field analysis and Monte Carlo simulations. For weak repulsions, the model exhibits a first-order irreversible phase transition between two absorbing states saturated by each different species. Increasing the repulsion, a reactive stationary state appears in addition to the saturated states. The irreversible phase transitions from the reactive phase to any of the saturated states are continuous and belong to the directed percolation universality class. However, a different critical behavior is found at the point where the directed percolation phase boundaries meet. The values of the critical exponents calculated at the bicritical point are in good agreement with the exponents corresponding to the parity-conserving universality class. Since the adsorption-reaction processes does not lead to a non-trivial local parity-conserving dynamics, this result confirms that the twofold symmetry between absorbing states plays a relevant role in determining the universality class. The value of the exponent $\delta_2$, which characterizes the fluctuations of an interface at the bicritical point, supports the Bassler-Brown's conjecture which states that this is a new exponent in the parity-conserving universality class.Comment: 19 pages, 22 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev

Equilibrium Properties of A Monomer-Monomer Catalytic Reaction on A One-Dimensional Chain

We study the equilibrium properties of a lattice-gas model of an $A + B \to 0$ catalytic reaction on a one-dimensional chain in contact with a reservoir for the particles. The particles of species $A$ and $B$ are in thermal contact with their vapor phases acting as reservoirs, i.e., they may adsorb onto empty lattice sites and may desorb from the lattice. If adsorbed $A$ and $B$ particles appear at neighboring lattice sites they instantaneously react and both desorb. For this model of a catalytic reaction in the adsorption-controlled limit, we derive analytically the expression of the pressure and present exact results for the mean densities of particles and for the compressibilities of the adsorbate as function of the chemical potentials of the two species.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Nonextensivity of the cyclic Lattice Lotka Volterra model

We numerically show that the Lattice Lotka-Volterra model, when realized on a square lattice support, gives rise to a {\it finite} production, per unit time, of the nonextensive entropy $S_q= \frac{1- \sum_ip_i^q}{q-1}$ $(S_1=-\sum_i p_i \ln p_i)$. This finiteness only occurs for $q=0.5$ for the $d=2$ growth mode (growing droplet), and for $q=0$ for the $d=1$ one (growing stripe). This strong evidence of nonextensivity is consistent with the spontaneous emergence of local domains of identical particles with fractal boundaries and competing interactions. Such direct evidence is for the first time exhibited for a many-body system which, at the mean field level, is conservative.Comment: Latex, 6 pages, 5 figure