A Mural at the Southwest Corner of the Mohan Chowk: Piece of History – Rediscovered

During the restoration process, the experts from JAICA, made a chance discovery of a mural. But unfortunately, its viewing was/is almost totally blocked by an extra wall, built right in-front of the actual wall, with the murals. To demystify the contents, it has had remained a professional challenge, as it could be barely viewed by one end only – from within a space between 8-9 inches gap. It posed challenge for many reasons. First was its difficult location. Secondly, the painted wall was also damaged beyond descriptions – plaster-surface peeled off spread all over – making the task to read the images even harder. Most importantly, to read the contents or to identify the imageries in such a location, it asked for a professional ability of an art writer or an art historian, to be able to read and analyze. However, after a very meticulous effort and a proper reading of the postures, emblems and other iconographical features, the narratives are being made – explaining on and about the murals found. The essay is prepared and is made, after a series of exercises – begun by field visits, and followed by closer examination of the images on the spot and as is available in digital images. The writing is made - after the long afterthoughts, and in consultation with the available references.

Presenting the Evidence

The next month is a busy time for Evans and Prestwich, who are now back in London, as they fit writing their papers into a hectic business schedule. The importance of two learned societies—the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries—is explained, as is the craft of putting together a scientific argument. Prestwich’s original manuscript and the referees’ reports are used to show the process. Evans’s chance discovery of comparable implements to those they had found at St Acheul proves a game changer. They came from Hoxne in Suffolk and had been found, but forgotten, sixty years before. Revolutions rely on chance. Attention is paid to the case they made that stone tools were human rather than natural. Did Evans fall back on his knowledge of numismatics and his recent struggles with a patent law case to convince sceptics that the tools from the Somme were indeed evidence of ancient humans? The language of the flints is all important. As they prepare and present their evidence, the chapter picks up the story of Falconer and his niece, Grace McCall, who were introduced in Abbeville in Chapter 2. They are now in Italy, caught up in the latest phase of the Risorgimento war.

The elusive crystals of calcium acetate hemihydrate: chiral rods linked by parallel hydrophilic strips

The chance discovery of crystals of calcium acetate hemihydrate, which is commonly formed on calcareous heritage objects, has allowed its single crystal structure determination; this remarkable crystal structure consists of chiral rod-like units.

Distribution of Ipomoea violacea (Convolvulaceae): patterns, gaps and reports for its occurrence in Brazil and West Tropical Africa

In 2015 a chance discovery of the beach moon flower in coastal Brazil led to an investigation of the global occurrence, distribution, and abundance of this pantropical littoral plant species. We here document new distribution records for coastal Brazil and West Tropical Africa; postulate a human-mediated long-distance dispersal for this species from the Indo-Pacific to the Atlantic, followed by local distribution via ocean currents; and provide historical context on the name confusion with other species. We also point out the risks inherent in using specimen information available on the internet without adequate verification for the identity of the specimens as a necessary first step.

Paranoid Transformer: Reading Narrative of Madness as Computational Approach to Creativity

This paper revisits the receptive theory in the context of computational creativity. It presents a case study of a Paranoid Transformer—a fully autonomous text generation engine with raw output that could be read as the narrative of a mad digital persona without any additional human post-filtering. We describe technical details of the generative system, provide examples of output, and discuss the impact of receptive theory, chance discovery, and simulation of fringe mental state on the understanding of computational creativity.

Bible Studies: Frank Russell and the "Book of Books"

Religion was as much a concern for Frank Russell throughout his life as it was for younger brother Bertrand and their father before them. Each advocated its rational study untainted by Christian dogma. The chance discovery of an amusing film review by Frank Russell of the biblical epic The Dawn of the World (1921) became the catalyst for an exploration of this theme in the paper that follows, as well as providing the opportunity to explore the foundations of Frank’s agnosticism and demonstrate his erudition and wit through the reprinting of his article “The Bible on the Film”.

First example of hybridisation between two Australian figs (Moraceae)

The chance discovery of an unusual Ficus specimen near Katherine in the Northern Territory prompted an investigation into hybridisation between two morphologically distinct endemic Australian sandpaper figs, Ficus aculeata A.Cunn. ex Miq. and F. coronulata Miq. In this study, genome-wide scans and morphological measurements were used to investigate the perceived hybridisation by using herbarium and freshly collected samples. Most of the putative hybrids displayed a wide variety of intermediate morphology and some individuals had characteristics consistent with the description of a third species, F. carpentariensis D.J.Dixon. Both genomic and morphometric results provided evidence of naturally occurring hybridisation events within Ficus. Additionally, the findings from this study showed possible taxonomic issues within the Northern Australian sandpaper figs that warrant further investigation.

Prologue

This book grew out of a chance discovery of an online memorial to an uncle I never knew. Reuben Peiss had been a librarian at Harvard when World War II began, and like many in academia, he was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services, the nation’s first intelligence agency. As a field agent based in Lisbon and Bern, he developed a network of book dealers and private individuals to acquire timely publications for intelligence analysis. When the Allies pushed into Germany, he worked with documents-gathering teams to uncover records of war crimes, caches of Nazi propaganda, and book collections buried in caves and mines. After the war, he headed an overseas mission of the Library of Congress to acquire works published in wartime Germany and occupied countries for American research libraries. When he returned, he worked in the State Department and taught at the library school of the University of California, Berkeley. Plagued with chronic illness, he lived a short life, dying in 1952 at age forty....