Scarlet Pimpernel Research Articles

Bio-efficacy of metsulfuron methyl and carfentrazone ethyl against weed spectrum in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

A field experiment was conducted during the winter (rabi) season of 2016–17 and 2017–18 at the Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, to evaluate bio-efficacy and phytotoxicity of metsulfuron methyl 10% + carfentrazone ethyl 40% against weed flora in irrigated wheat crop (Triticum aestivum L). Major dominant weeds that infested the crop were lamb’s quarters (Chenopodium album L.), scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis L.) and white sweet clover (Melilotus albus Medik.). The lowest dry weight (g/m2) and weed-control efficacy (WCE) of test weed species were found in treatments T4 (metsulfuron methyl 10% + carfentrazone ethyl 40% @ 100 g/ha), T3 (metsulfuron methyl 10% + carfentrazone ethyl 40% @ 75 g/ha) and T2 (metsulfuron methane 10% + carfentrazone ethyl 40% @ 50 g/ha) respectively. Application of metsulfuron methyl 10% + carfentrazone ethyl 40% at all doses was found to be effective against all the 3 weeds and significantly increased the yield of the main crop. Application of weedicides did not show any phytotoxicity symptoms on the wheat crop in both the seasons and also on the succeeding crop of rice (Oryza sativa L.).

Detection and Gender in Early Crime Fiction: Mrs Bucket to Lady Molly

Crime fiction is often mistakenly held to be based on books and male detection. In fact, in the nineteenth century periodicals were a major mode of publication and from the mid-century on women inquirers played a recurring role in the developing genre, while most early male detectives were, by later standards, distinctly under-gendered. Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal was a major early source; by the 1860s, female detectives were being created by male writers and in Bleak House (1852–53), Dickens gave Inspector Bucket’s wife distinct inquiring capacities. The major Australian author Mary Fortune – with more than four hundred stories in magazines over forty years from the 1860s – developed female inquirers over time. By the 1890s, professional English woman detectives were created, Loveday Brooke by C.L. Pirkis and Florence Cusack by L.T. Meade, while Baroness Orczy created as well as her best-selling ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ the leading police detective Lady Molly, like the others first appearing in magazines.

Ethnopharmacological basis for folkloric claims of Anagallis arvensis Linn. (Scarlet Pimpernel) as prokinetic, spasmolytic and hypotensive in province of Punjab, Pakistan

Ethnopharmacological relevanceThe conventional naturopaths of Punjab Province (Pakistan) have trivial usage of Anagallis arvensis Linn.(Primulaceae) for cure of diarrhea, constipation, asthma as well as hypertension. AimPresent research was focused to discover comprehensive mechanism of spasmogenic, spasmolytic, bronchorelaxant and hypotensive folkloric usage of Anagallis arvensis Linn.. MethodologyThe crude extract of Anagallis arvensis Linn. (Aa.Cr) & its (aqueous & organic) portions tested in-vitro on isolated jejunum, ileum, trachea, aorta, paired atria preparations as well as in-vivo in mice & normotensive anaesthetized rats. The responses have been noted by transducers (isotonic & isometric) coupled to Power Lab. ResultAnagallis arvensis Linn. (Aa.Cr; crude aqueous-alcoholic extract) produced contractile action at low concentrations but relaxant action was observed by increasing concentrations on spontaneous contractions of isolated jejunum of rabbit. But, pre-treatment of tissue with atropine prior extract caused suppression of contractile effect indicating presence of cholinergic muscarinic response of Aa.Cr. It also triggered relaxation of high Potassium -stimulated contractions of jejunum with subsequent non-parallel right move in Ca++ CRCs. Moreover, Aa.Cr relaxed carbachol - & high Potassium - stimulated contractions in trachea of rabbit but observed relaxant effect was powerful against CCh (1 μM)- stimulated contractions with rightside parallel move of CCh-curves succeeded by non-parallel move, like Dicyclomine, having dual activities. The Aa.Cr also showed relaxant result on Phenylephrine and High Potassium -prompted contractions in endothelium intact aorta. The fractionation revealed segregations of contractile & relaxant effects in relevant aqueous & organic portions. The Intravenous administration of Aa.Cr to ketamine-diazepam anaesthetized normo-tensive albino rats resulted in decreased MABP, SBP & DBP. The Aa.Cr applied negative (−) inotropic & chronotropic action on paired atria. The Aa.Cr also exhibited anti-diarrheal action in mice against castor oil prompted diarrhea and also mitigated distance covered by charcoal meal in gastrointestinal tract in a manner comparable with loperamide. ConclusionThese results revealed presence of CCB and selective muscarinic agonist activity in Aa.Cr, hence validating folkloric practice of Anagallis arvensis Linn. in diarrhea, constipation, asthma & hypertension.

The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within by Richard Breitman

Reviewed by: The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within by Richard Breitman Martin Kitchen The Berlin Mission: The American Who Resisted Nazi Germany From Within. By Richard Breitman. New York: Public Affairs, 2019. 336 pages. $27.52 (cloth). That the State Department, in spite of some indifferent ambassadors in Berlin, was relatively well informed about Nazi Germany was in large part due to a junior consular officer, Raymond Geist, who was posted to Berlin in 1929. In The Berlin Mission, Richard Breitman gives in sympathetic detail an account of this relatively minor figure, whose considerable influence, both in helping Jewish emigrants and in advising the State Department, has hitherto been overlooked. At first, Geist and his superior, George S. Messersmith, were able to do very little to help potential immigrants to the United States, due to the Hoover administration's stringent restrictions. When the SA and SS went on the rampage after the Reichstag fire, Geist and Messersmith were virtually powerless to help US citizens caught up in this mindless violence. They received no support from the ambassador, William E. Dodd, a man justifiably described as "a trivial, pedantic professor" by the colourful "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, one of Martha Dodd's many lovers. During these early years, Geist played second fiddle to Messersmith, but as early as 1934 he voiced the eccentric opinion that Germany was bent on creating an empire "similar to that maintained by the Caesars." Both men were now caught between a mounting demand for visas to the United States and a State Department determined to curb immigration, using the cruel and preposterous argument that American Jews were deliberately exaggerating the extent of Nazi persecution to enable more immigration. In 1934, Messersmith was appointed Assistant Secretary of State to Sumner Welles, both of whom listened to Geist's reports from Berlin. He was replaced by Douglas Jenkins, who deferred to Geist, his intellectual superior. In 1936, Geist began to send a series of jeremiads directly to the State Department, warning that Hitler was bent on war, that the Wehrmacht preached a doctrine of "world power or ruin," that Adolf Hitler would never surrender, and that only his death would remove him. At the same time, he bearded the lion and negotiated directly with Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard [End Page 435] Heydrich in an effort to promote immigration to the US. He also cultivated a close relationship with the intriguing Werner Best, who was then a key figure in the Gestapo. Geist was by now in effect the chief US intelligence analyst in Germany, often reporting directly to the President. He sent a trenchant analysis of the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair and was one of the first to suspect that Hitler was bent on attacking the Soviet Union. Geist was adamant in insisting that Jews found guilty of "racial defilement" by having sexual intercourse with an "Aryan" should not be barred from immigration to the US on the grounds that they had a criminal record. After the Anschluss, he negotiated directly with Werner Best and Karl Haselbacher, the Gestapo boss in Vienna, to protect US citizens from Nazi thugs. He then had a tough battle to increase the immigration quota from Austria, but his success was at the expense of the German quota. Among those whom he was able to assist were Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Geist worked closely with the British passport control officer and secret intelligence officer, Frank Foley, an admirable character who became known as the "British Schindler" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." According to Raymond Geist, Werner Best told him that Hitler had ordered the pogrom on November 9, 1938 and that he intended to "annihilate" the Jews. Haselbacher repeated this assessment. Ambassador Wilson noted on Geist's report that this was "real eventual genocide." Never afraid to go directly to the top, Geist introduced a delegation of Quakers on a mission to rescue Jews to Heydrich, who proved to be remarkably cooperative. Geist also worked closely with George Rublee, President Roosevelt's special envoy for political refugees, but they were now in a frantic race between the outbreak of war and finding a solution, however inadequate, to the chronic refugee crisis...

Nabokov and Indeterminacy: The Case of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Priscilla Meyer

Reviewed by: Nabokov and Indeterminacy: The Case of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Priscilla Meyer Leona Toker Priscilla Meyer, Nabokov and Indeterminacy: The Case of The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018. 188 pp. The growing recognition of the thought-suffused texture and artistic excellence of Vladimir Nabokov's work has in recent decades gained expression in books wholly devoted to one of his novels—Invitation to a Beheading, The Gift, Lolita, Pnin, Pale Fire, Ada— or even to a single short story such as "Signs and Symbols." In the past few years three books have been devoted to The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, a novel once regarded by many (including, regrettably, my younger self) as brilliant but flawed and mainly transitional from Nabokov's writing in Russian to his English-language fiction. This new interest in the novel has been partly stimulated by a growing corpus of biographical materials—in the first place, Brian Boyd's biography of the novelist. The first two of these books annotate the text chapter by chapter and offer solutions to the enigma represented by the novel's mysterious co-protagonist, the English writer Sebastian Knight, whose "real life" is being sought by his Russian half-brother V., the narrator of the novel. In Absolute Solution (2013) Andrew Caulton foregrounds the echoes of British detective fiction, especially that of Arthur Conan Doyle, in Nabokov's text in order to argue that Sebastian's secret is that he is a British intelligence agent, a version of the Scarlet Pimpernel (and that V. almost gets killed by spies of a hostile power in one of the novel's central episodes). In Silent Love (2016), Gerard de Vries makes a different tentative suggestion: the secret behind Sebastian's seemingly cruel break-up with Clare Bishop is his homosexuality (a criminal offence in antebellum Britain and hence, indeed, to be kept moot even should V. become aware of it). The most recent book, Priscilla Meyer's Nabokov and Indeterminacy, abstains from offering a solution to the enigma of the protagonist's character and conduct and, on the contrary, discusses different aspects of indeterminacy in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight in relation to Nabokov's other novels, in particular Despair, Lolita, and Pale Fire, showing that the themes and techniques of this novel, written in 1938–1939, are integral features of Nabokov's larger corpus. Whereas in Postmodernist Fiction Brian McHale places Nabokov on the borderline between modernism and post-modernism (modernism being dominated by epistemological concerns and post-modernism by ontological ones), Meyer traces the post-modernist features of Nabokov's work, which gain the clearest [End Page 182] articulation in the 1962 Pale Fire, back to his last pre-war novel, and associates them with Nabokov's view that the term "reality" makes sense only in quotation marks. For Meyer this view of reality is not merely an epistemological issue but also a matter of metaphysical uncertainty staged in Nabokov's worlds. Her book belongs to the stream of Nabokov scholarship that foregrounds the theme of the "otherworld" and argues that search for a metaphysical insight, ineluctably incomplete, characterizes the bulk of Nabokov's corpus: "Nabokov has set his linguistic and cultural worlds into tension with the unknowable beyond; he cannot know if he can ever return in the next world to what he has lost in this one, but assuages the pain of that uncertainty by dedicating his work to optimysticism" (18). In The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, however, the coinage "optimystic" is used ironically, and mainly in application to believers in the "golden paradise" of established religions (1959: 177). At the beginning of Speak, Memory Nabokov protests against "the walls of time" that separate him and his "bruised fists" from the "free world of timelessness" (1966: 20). Did his fists make a dent in the walls? Meyer's book associates the indeterminacy of Nabokov's plots and layers of meaning with the unavailability of an answer to this question. Yet in first-rate literary works indeterminacy can be an achievement rather than a failure and is accompanied by overdetermination: the reader is stimulated to set...

The effect of oxygen concentration on the germination of some weed species under control conditions

AbstractContinuous use of heavy machinery in fields and frequent farm traffic sometimes result in soil compaction. Soil compaction reduces the oxygen (O2) concentration in soil capillaries and hence lowers the O2 availability for germinating seeds. We investigated how reduced O2 levels changed germination behavior of weeds to elucidate their potential to adapt to O2-deficient soils (compacted, compressed, and waterlogged soils and soils with hard surfaces). Two similar laboratory experiments were conducted with five O2 treatments (20.9%, 15%, 10%, 5%, and 2.5%). The germination percentage of the invasive weed hairy fiddleneck [Amsinckia menziesii (Lehm.) A. Nelson & J.F. Macbr. var. menziesii] and the common weeds common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album L.) and Persian speedwell (Veronica persica Poir) was not significantly reduced at 15% O2. The germination of scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis L. ssp. arvensis), silky windgrass [Apera spica-venti (L.) Beauv.], catchweed bedstraw (Galium aparine L.), and knawel (Scleranthus annuus L.) was significantly reduced at 15% O2. The highest germination was obtained at 20.9% O2 for blackgrass (Alopecurus myosuroides Huds.), A. spica-venti, G. aparine, annual bluegrass (Poa annua L.), wild mustard (Sinapis arvensis L.), scentless chamomile [Tripleurospermum inodorum (L.) Sch. Bip.], field violet (Viola arvensis Murray) and the less common weeds A. arvensis and S. annuus. Distribution of flora in the landscape may change on O2-deficient soils by reducing germination of some species such as A. arvensis and S. annuus and favoring others like A. menziesii and C. album. The ability to germinate at 2.5% and 5% O2 may contribute to explain why A. myosuroides and A. menziesii have become successful as weeds on O2-deficient soils, as they maintained a germination percentage between 34% and 58% at 2.5% O2.

Efficacy of Certain Tribenuron-Methyl Formulations for the Control of Broad-Leaved Weeds in Wheat under Field Conditions

Two field experiments were conducted during 2017-2018 and 2018-2019 seasons to evaluate the effect of eight tribenuron-methyl formulations (four as WG 75% and four as DF 75%) beside hand weeding (twice at 21 and 42 DAS) on broad-leaved weeds (BLWs) in wheat under field conditions. All the agricultural practices were carried out uniformly as recommended. All treatments were arranged in randomized complete block design and replicated four times each of 42 m2 (6×7 m). All formulations were applied at the rate of 8.0 gm fed.-1 in 200 L. water fed.-1 by Knapsack sprayer (CP3) at 30 days after sowing (DAS). After two months from sowing (2MAS) (one month after treatment, one MAT), weeds were collected from an area of 2m2 which was randomly selected from each plot (by using a square woody frame, 50 cm×50 cm). The removed annual BLWs were identified and counted for density as number m-2 and biomass [fresh weight gm m-2] in all treatments. In the untreated control, biomass, biomass%, density and density% for each BLW were recorded. The common prevailed annual BLWs in the experimental wheat field during both seasons were annual Sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus L.), cheese weed, little mallow (Malva parviflora L.), chicory (Cichorium pumpilum Jacq.), dentated dock (Rumex dentatus L.), medic (Medicago intertexta (L.) Mill.), scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis L.), sea beet, wild beet (Beta vulgaris L.) and sweet clover, Indian melilot (Melilotus indica L.). The results clearly indicated that biomass and density were varied according to the dominant weed species and from season to another. The BLWs were the most dominant and also they were common in wheat fields and the biomass and density of BLWs were varied between years and weeds. The herbicidal treatments gave the minimum weed biomass and density and gave good weed control efficiency (WCE %) than hand weeding treatments. Granstar formulation completely controlled C. pumpilum weed (in the first season), A. arvensis, R. dentatus and S. oleraceus weeds (in the second season). Skylla formulation completely controlled M. parviflora and R. dentatus weeds in the first season. The tested tribenuron-methyl formulations did not cause complete control for B. vulgaris, M. intertexta and M. indica weeds in both seasons. In all cases, the herbicidal treatments increased significantly the biological yield, grain yield, straw yield, harvest index and thousand grain weight in comparison with untreated control. Also, Granstar, Skylla and Cash Cool herbicides were the most effective, while Ownostar was the least effective. We can concluded that, Granstar, Skylla and Cash Cool formulations are the most effective in controlling broad-leaved weeds in wheat field and consequently increased the grain yield.

Need for Anaphoric Resolution towards Sentiment Analysis-A Case Study with Scarlet Pimpernel (Novel)

Need for Anaphoric Resolution towards Sentiment Analysis-A Case Study with Scarlet Pimpernel (Novel)

Pimpinella saxifraga (Apiaceae): A new record from Jejudo Island, Korea

Pimpinella saxifraga L. (Scarlet pimpernel or Burnet saxifrage), a newly introduced species, was found from Baekyakyi oreum (a parasitic cone or cinder cone) in Seogwipo, Jejudo Island. This species is native to Europe and western Asia and is reported as a widely invasive species around the world. Pimpinella saxifraga is distinguished from other related Korean taxa by leaves that are pinnately compound with 3?7 pairs of segments, which vary from simple, ovate, to 2-pinnatisect, with linear lobes. The vernacular name of “Baek-yak-yi-cham-na-mul” was assigned after the name of the cinder cone where it was initially discovered. We provide descriptions of the morphological characters, photographs and a key to allied taxa in Korea. The geographical origin and introduction routes are unknown, but it is highly likely that it was introduced as fodder given its high nutritious value for sheep and cattle or as a medicinal herb. This species invades commonly grasslands and woodlands and prefers dry, well-drained, and calcareous soils. The distribution of this species was analyzed by searching extensively in surrounding Baekyakyi oreum and adjacent cinder cones, but no other populations were observed. It is protected commonly at the edges or inside of the patchy pine forest in the cinder cone from grazing by cattle; given the worldwide invasive nature of this species, special monitoring and management plans should be developed.

Weed Management in Common Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) Nursery Plantation

AbstractCommon cottonwood-based agroforestry system is widely adopted in Indian Indo-Gangetic plains. The stem cuttings of common cottonwood are raised in a nursery 10 to 12 months in rows spaced 0.5 mx0.5 m, before re-planting in the field. The longer duration of 10 to 12 months and wider spacing of stem cuttings in the nursery makes the entire transplants highly vulnerable to weed competition, especially during early establishment stages. The efficacy of preemergence herbicides and plastic and straw mulches for weed management in common cottonwood nursery was investigated at two sites in years 2014 and 2015. The major weed flora in the experimental field consisted of three grass weeds (crowfootgrass, feather lovegrass, and southern crabgrass), and four broadleaf weeds (scarlet pimpernel, garden spurge, niruri, and lesser swinecress). The integrated use of pendimethalin or alachlor applied PRE with paddy straw mulch significantly reduced density and biomass of both grass and broadleaf weeds compared to herbicide or straw mulch used alone, and provided similar level of weed control to hand weeding at both locations. Spreading of plastic mulch in the whole field after punching holes for common cottonwood stem cuttings, or in row spaces recorded similar weed control to hand-weeding. The integrated use of herbicides with straw mulch, and or plastic mulch alone significantly improved plant height, stem diameter, below- and above-ground biomass of common cottonwood plants compared to unweeded check. The study concluded that integrated use of herbicides plus paddy straw mulch or plastic mulch alone could be adopted for weed management in common cottonwood nursery plantations.

Flat-cutting loosening in the system of fallow cultivation of chernozem soil and weediness of crops

The article presents the results of field experiments, where on the basis of podsolized heavy loamy chernozem the influence of replacement of mouldboard ploughing with nonmouldboard cultivation over top soil weediness, weediness at the beginning and end of spring crop vegetation and weed species composition before harve sting were studied. Investigation methods of main fall ploughing under spring crops of five-course rotation: soybeans–rape–wheat–flax–barley at the depths of 15-17, 20-22, 25-27 cm were conducted after post-harvest field tillage.
 Analysis of data on contamination of the top soil with weed seeds have shown that with the replacement of fall main mouldboard ploughing gwith nonmouldboard cultivation the figure before sowing of all crops withdifferent tillage depthat crop rotation average increased by 131-132%. It caused the increase of actual weed infestation of all crops and at the beginning and end of spring crop vegetationafter different depths of fall nonmouldboard cultivation compared with ploughing at crop rotation average it was 120–132 and 123-138%respectively.
 Species composition of weeds afterthe replacement of main fall mouldboard ploughing with nonmouldboard cultivation remained mainlyunchanged; although in rape plantings the proportion of white campion and early spring weed sincreased, in wheat plantings– wild mustard andscentless mayweed, insoybean plantings– late spring weeds, in flax plantings– white campion, and in barley plantings– scarlet pimpernel.

On Eforgan’s <em>Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor</em>

On Eforgan's Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor (revised 2d edition). By Estel Eforgan. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2013. 296 pp., 978-0853039150 (pb). US $32.95.When actor and screenwriter Leslie Howard died in a mysterious plane crash over Bay of Biscay in June 1943, Guardian obituary described his most outstanding quality: the intensely English quality which made him popular everywhere.1 Even today, Howard is remembered primarily for his roles as English aristocrat in films such as The Scarlet Pimpernel (Harold Young, UK, 1934) and Pygmalion (Anthony Asquith, Leslie Howard, UK, 1938), or as tragic hero in productions like Of Human Bondage ( John Cromwell, USA, 1934) and Gone with Wind (Victor Fleming [George Cukor], USA, 1939). As a symbol of refinement and gentlemanliness, Howard's character spoke to social instability British audiences were experiencing due to political crisis and war. It was a time when conceptions of Englishness were being challenged-not least because of influx of Jewish migrants and refugees escaping persecution in Europe who created a space of difference in British society. Howard, as Estel Eforgan's meticulously researched biography, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor, reveals, was nothing if not aware of social and political influences of his dramatic persona.Eforgan's biography is a compelling and thorough overview of Howard's life and career within context of social and political upheaval, migration, and war. As such it makes an important contribution to fields of media and cultural studies, as well as Jewish studies, revealing influential role that actors and filmmakers played in political arena. As Eforgan uncovers, there was more to Howard's persona as ideal Englishman than most people consider. Leslie Howard Steiner, whose father was a Jew and whose mother's origins were also Jewish (from Russia and East Prussia), was intensely committed to political activism and anti-Nazi efforts in years leading up to World War II. And while biography covers much more than that-including Howard's career on English stage in 1920s and launch of his stardom in New York and Hollywood-Eforgan makes clear that by mid-1930s Howard was making career and life choices that were influenced by politics. More specifically, he began to use his fame as a tool to resist Hitler's rise to power and persecution of Jews in Europe.Eforgan's sympathy for her subject will strike a chord with readers and personalize exhaustive amount of detail on Howard's life. The chapters that trace Howard's development as an actor, screenwriter, producer, director, and public intellectual from 1920s to 1940s are filled with lively anecdotes as well as with valuable comments on social and cultural milieu. Some of most entertaining points in biography include Eforgan's musings on Howard's stage mishaps and love affairs, and colorful characters who peppered actor's professional and personal lives. Yet it is way Eforgan frames Howard's career in connection with Jewish migration and persecution during rise of Nazism and at start of World War II that makes this biography especially noteworthy. Eforgan's view that these elements played a key role in actor's life is underscored in way biography is bookended by Leslie Howard's little-known Jewish roots. The work begins with a story of Howard's real family history in Vienna and England (3), and ends with his last speech before his death, when he laughed at someone's suggestion that he was idealised picture of perfect Englishman. He surprised press when he publicly admitted, suppose we do not have to tell them that I began as a Hungarian (229).Indeed, there is a good deal to discover about British Jewish migration, as well as assimilation, at turn of century from Eforgan's description of Leslie Howard's background. …

Integrated Weed Management in Potato Using Straw Mulch and Atrazine

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is one of four major food crops in the world. Weed control is a major component in potato production and has been accomplished using different methods, including but not limited to the use of herbicides and straw mulch. A combination of preemergence herbicide and straw mulch may improve weed control; however, no information is available for combining both methods, along with their effects on weed control, weed density, and potato tuber yields. The objective of this study was to evaluate weed control in potato using atrazine or straw mulch applied alone at different rates or in combination. A field experiment was conducted for 4 years from 2006 to 2010 in Ludhiana, Punjab, India. Common weeds included burclover (Medicago arabica), common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album), littleseed canarygrass (Phalaris minor), purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus), scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis), swinecress (Coronopus didymus), and toothed dock (Rumex dentatus). Results suggested that atrazine applied alone was not very effective and resulted in 0% to 78% control depending on the weed species being investigated at 30 days after treatment (DAT). Straw mulch applied alone at any rate provided ≥90% control of toothed dock, but control of other weed species was variable. A combination of atrazine and straw mulch at any rate usually resulted in >90% weed control at 30 DAT, except for swinecress and purple nutsedge. This treatment combination also resulted in weed density as low as 0 plant/m2 for common lambsquarters, scarlet pimpernel, and toothed dock. Potato tuber weight and yield was significantly higher in all treatments compared with untreated control without difference among them. It is concluded that a combination of straw mulch and atrazine can provide effective weed control in potato.

Ahmad Deedat: The making of a transnational religious figure

0. IntroductionDuring the 1980s and 1990s whenever South Africa's Muslims travelled abroad for pleasure or pilgrimage, they were usually quizzed by strangers about Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) and Ahmed Deedat (1918-2005). Whilst the former was known to them via news reports for his courageous political escapades as the 'scarlet pimpernel' of the African National Congress against the apartheid regime, the latter was widely known to them via his booklets and video cassettes for his intellectual 'crusades' as the zealous Muslim da'wah combatant who countered unswerving South African Christian missionaries (referred to as the tent makers). In different parts of the world - particularly those residing in the South (i.e. Africa, Southwest and Southeast Asia) - many admired both men for their sterling contributions in their respective political and religious terrains. Well, since this is not a comparative study of these two individuals as transnational figures (Sadouni 2007; 2013), it is essentially - though not exclusively - an essay that reviews Goolam Vahed's wonderful text that focus on Ahmed Deedat: The Man and His Mission (Durban: IPCI, ISBN 978-0-6205-3897-8). It, however, uses Vahed's book - that took a while to reach the book shelves as a result of numerous (internal) technical hitches - as a useful platform to further explore Deedat's escapades as a Muslim missionary.In Vahed's concluding chapter titled 'On God's Wavelength?' he clearly stated that '...this book does not attempt to engage with Deedat's personal life. Its focal point is largely on 'what he achieved in the public sphere' (p.254) and his introductory chapter titled 'The Argumentative Muslim' (pp.1-15) he clarified that '(t)his study does not evaluate Deedat's theological arguments in any depth ... (but) ... seeks to situate Deedat historically and weave the facts of his life and mission into a coherent narrative' (p.14). After having gone through the twenty five chapters, which include the respective introduction and conclusion, one may confidently argue that Vahed has done South African biographical scholarship a great service with the manner in which he approached the study of Deedat's life. It is a worthwhile read and let us share our thoughts why this is the case. Vahed, who is a trained UKZN historian and who has co-authored/edited numerous academic works related to religion, ethnicity and sports, has once again not disappointed the reader in the way he skillfully narrated the life of this fascinating transnational figure despite the odds that were stacked against Deedat for much of his life.The Biographical Text's SourcesVahed like all ardent historians and biographers based himself on both primary and secondary sources to write this informative text about one of South Africa's most well-known Muslim missionaries. The book was thus based upon a variety of materials such as correspondence and interviews, and, of course, Deedat's long list of audio/video cassettes and books/booklets of which the two volumes, namely The Choice: Islam and Christianity (Durban & Birmingham: IPCI, 1995 and 1999), stand out as one of his most important publications. He did not include all the Deedat publications that he consulted since they were readily available for scrutinizing and viewing at the Islamic Propagation Centre International's (IPCI) Durban headquarters. And instead of providing in the (End)notes (Vahed 2013: 273-283) copious citations that he extracted from the forty four (personal and e-mail correspondence) interviews that Vahed (2013: 284-285) conducted, he only recorded the names of the individuals as part of his list of sources.Now since Vahed drew upon different published and unpublished material to construct his narrative about Deedat and his mission, we wonder why he did not fully acknowledge - though listed in his bibliography - the descriptive research of Riaz Cassim Jamal (d.2013) as a pioneering effort in recording Deedat's eventful life. …

The Well‐Born Superhero

The dual-identity hero-millionaire playboy by day, crime-fighting do-gooder by night-is one of most enduring staples of American comic books, most famously embodied by Bob Kane and Bill Finger's 1939 Batman. The hybrid figure, however, originates decades earlier and encompasses a multi-generic, transatlantic array of texts unified by central trope of controlled, individual transformation employed for social good. Early literature of dual-identity hero spans not only comic books but plays, silent film, radio, popular novels, and pulp fiction magazines, in an expanse of genres that, in addition to superhero narratives, includes adventure, western, crime, science fiction, and romance. While these characters have no single point of origin and influence, superhero's duality evolved within cultures that exhibited a larger preoccupation with superhuman transformation.The contemporary superhero character type is in part a product of British and American eugenics movements of early twentieth century. [RJegardless of literary form in which it is presented, write Lois A. Cuddy and Claire M. Roche in Evolution and Eugenics in American Literature and Culture, 1880-1940, the Darwinian way of seeing world and human life had taken root, and science empowered upper-class, educated, white men to enjoy only thing'they could believe with absolute certainty: their own preeminence in a world of constant (47). While Bruce Wayne continues to embody that pre-eminently upper-class white man championing status quo, generative context of Evolution, devoid of protective hand of Providence, presented two assaults to late nineteenth and early twentieth-century social structure: degenerates from below, and degeneration from within. The Superman was solution to both. Although name is associated with comic book creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman was central term of eugenics introduced by George Bernard Shaw in 1903 (with only a tangential reference to Nietzsche). The hybrid figure of dual-identity hero emerged at this cultural moment when many eugenicists were popularizing Mendel's principles of hybridization. Beginning with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, supermen of aristocratic birth rescue ruling class by metaphorically blending their identities with objects of their fear. Refiguring gothic tragedies of interbreeding into narratives of triumph, dual-identity hero-part well-born, part criminal commoner-absorbs threat of unfit, while simultaneously improving well born by purging upper class of its degenerative parasitism. By transforming idle rich into noble adventurers, eugenic hero narratives safeguard their class' inheritance as rightful rulers. Where selective breeding promised eventual biological transformation of ruling class into a ruling race of supermen, fantastical supermen of genre literatures popular before comic books delivered eugenic future in a single bound.As first and most influential dual-identity Superman, Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel established hybridity as a paradoxically reactionary trait for well-born hybrids to follow in emergent genre. As eugenics widened its cultural hold, hero hybridization expanded, particularly into pulp fiction, manifesting a range of iconic characters that include Tarzan, Gray Seal, and Zorro. When eugenics declined in late 1920s, hero formula mirrored that change too. As Superman found its ultimate expression in Nazism, a race of artificially evolved superhumans shifted from societal goal to societal threat. While still maintaining cultural fascination with figure of Superman, 1930s pulp fiction subverted marriage plot to isolate superhuman heroes and thwart narratives of reproduction. In their final, comic book incarnations, supermen abandoned eugenics to defend egalitarian principles movement opposed. …

HAWTHORNE'S HABITATIONS: A LITERARY LIFE

HAWTHORNE'S HABITATIONS: A LITERARY LIFE. By Robert Milder. Oxford, UK: Oxford UP, 2013. xiv + 295 pp. $39.95.In many respects the Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) whom we encounter in Robert Milder's Hawthorne's Habitations would not have seemed unfamiliar to Herman Melville, who, in an 1851 letter to the author himself, observed that, "did circumstances permit, [he] should like nothing better than to devote an elaborate and careful paper to the full consideration and analysis of the purport and significance" of the preoccupation with a "certain tragic phase of humanity" that "so strongly characterizes all of [Hawthorne's] writings"-the "tragicalness," as he puts it, "of human thought in its own unbiassed, native, and profounder workings" (Julian Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, vol. 1 [Boston: Houghton, 1884], 387). The elusive Hawthorne inspired and indeed encouraged "tragical" responses of this sort in part because he wrote in so tantalizing a fashion about what he described in "The Custom House" section of The Scarlet Letter (Boston: Ticknor, 1850) as a purported "inmost me" kept always "behind its veil" (2). Hawthorne perhaps thus insured that his self-haunted works would not merely endure but in some sense prevail over generations of readers, critics, and scholars intent on forcing the locked door of what his friend George Hillard described in 1850 as the "blue chamber" of Hawthorne's soul, a real or imagined Gothic crypt into which, as Hillard thought, the author himself "hardly dared to enter" (Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Memories of Hawthorne [Boston: Houghton, 1897], qtd. on 121-22).A master of ambiguity, a state he may have deemed the only honest aesthetic response to the problem of existence, Hawthorne was also an adept manipulator of audiences (see the oft-ignored "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" [1837]) and a purveyor of ironies so subtle they seem to vibrate in and out of existence. To this day we seek him here and we seek him there, very much as Baroness Orczy's eternally frustrated "Frenchies" sought their "demned elusive" Scarlet Pimpernel (Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel [New York: Grosset, 1905], 117). It has long been fashionable to read Hawthorne's works as covertly autobiographical, but like the subject of the "ancient picture" in "Edward Randolph's Portrait" (1838), over which "Time had thrown an impenetrable veil," leaving it to "tradition, and fable, and conjecture, to say what had once been there portrayed," the author's psychological lineaments have remained stubbornly obscure. Often, in fact, his oeuvre has seemed less a series of portraits than a fun house full of antique mirrors in the mysterious and abysmal depths of which critics have discerned only their own reflected and distorted countenances rather than that of the appalling and enticing Monsieur du Miroir.No author of a work of criticism can hope to be entirely free of projection, and if it is therefore not entirely absent from Hawthorne's Habitations (the somber, tormented subject, an existentialist born out of his due time whose "fictions rest on a barely concealed intuition of the void" [20], appears to share many of Milder's own ontological concerns), the book is not less interesting on that account. Though rather tragic than otherwise, this Hawthorne is a very interesting personage. Written in graceful, clear, and often elegant prose (no small thing in these parlous times) and impeccably edited, Hawthorne's Habitations is a consistently intriguing book. As the dust jacket describes, the book's ten chapters and epilogue constitute a "literary/biographical study" of the "self-divided man and writer" as he lived and worked in Salem, Concord, England, and Italy. Each of these locations represents a "habitation"-not merely a locale but a "mental residence, or region of thought and sensibility rooted in time and place" (ix). Not "a formal biography, but more than a work of literary criticism" (xi), the book explores the complex and often ambiguous ways in which both the author and his works were shaped by these habitations (which, from the point of view of a culture historian, are only vaguely sketched in). …

Abiotic factors may explain the geographical distribution of flower colour morphs and the maintenance of colour polymorphism in the scarlet pimpernel

SummaryFlower colour polymorphism is traditionally attributed to pollinator selection although other factors, such as indirect selection on correlated traits, can play an important role.Lysimachia arvensisis a widespread annual species with two colour morphs differing in anthocyanin composition. We explored the hypothesis that colour polymorphism is maintained by selection related to environmental heterogeneity.Morph frequencies and environmental traits were recorded in 51 populations along a wide geographical range. To explore the existence of morph‐by‐environment interactions, we conducted an experimental study comparing the two morphs under treatments differing in water and light availability.A geographical pattern was found with a negative association between blue frequencies and latitude. The proportion of the blue morph increased with temperature and sunshine hours, but decreased with precipitation. Flowering onset and flower size differed between morphs and scarcely varied across treatments. In contrast, several fitness components such as germination, seedling survival, seedling mass and flower production showed important morph‐by‐environment interactions. The blue morph showed higher overall male and female fitness in all the treatment combinations excepting in sun‐wet conditions where the red morph had higher fitness.Synthesis. Our results indicate that the mechanism of selection on flower colour seems to be related to differences in fitness of both morphs due to abiotic factors. These differences could explain the geographical distribution of flower colour morphs and the maintenance of the colour polymorphism. The marked difference in flowering time between morphs leaves open the potential for assortative mating and speciation inLysimachia arvensis.

Is it Zippered? Does it Flare? That Darn Complexin Clamping SNARE

I thank Tom W. Woodbury for the artwork and Tyler Potts for help in preparing references.The title is with apologies to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The repetition of the nomos of cultural memory in Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom and Mamphela Ramphele's A Life

This article points to the repetition of figures of memory in autobiography as a condition of entry into a distinct temporality of ‘worldliness’. The said entry, as the two autobiographies by Nelson Mandela and Mamphela Ramphele show, is distinctly enabled through the signifying time attending the nomadic routes of exile and banishment. As a feature of South Africa's peculiar versions of personhood, nomadic routes are here symptomatic of strategic repetitions of memoric figures of both tradition and modernity: the eternal return of S.E.K. Mqhayi, the revolutionary poet through the Scarlet Pimpernel antic, among others, in the case of Mandela. Subterfuge during Ramphele's banishment is similarly managed through the repetition in-between past rhythms of rural sojourn and the Antigone figure.

In this issue – July 2012

In this issue – <scp>J</scp>uly 2012