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Plant volatiles help herbivores to locate their hosts, and therefore, they could be used to help develop pesticidefree pest management strategies. To develop an attractant for tea leafhopper (Empoasca onukii), we screened nine tea plant volatile compounds for their attractiveness using Y-tube olfactometer assays. Results indicated that tea leafhoppers significantly preferred ocimene, limonene, (Z)-3-hexenol, and (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate over clean air. These compounds were combined in a blend which lost its attractiveness at concentrations below 10−2 g/ml in liquid paraffin. In field tests, the blend was attractive to leafhoppers only in autumn, but not in summer. Analyses of the tea field background odor showed that all four components of the blend were present at much higher concentrations in summer (0.05–0.001 ng/liter) than in autumn (~10- to 25-fold lower). In field Y-tube bioassays, compared with the tea field background odor, the blend was attractive at a concentration of 10−1 g/ml in liquid paraffin, but not at 10−2 g/ml. These results suggest that field background odor can disrupt the attractiveness of an attractant based on plant volatiles to herbivores. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the nuclear shell model, we study the influence of ultra-strong magnetic field on the electron capture nuclei reactions 56,58Co→56,58Fe, 56,57Ni→56,57Co, 52,53Fe→52,53Mn and 57,60Cu→57,60Ni. The results show that the electron capture rates of most iron group nuclei are increased greatly in the ultrastrong magnetic field, and even exceed three orders of magnitude in the range from 5 × 1013 G to 2.5 × 1017 G. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]