High tolerance to salinity and herbivory stresses may explain the expansion of Ipomoea cairica to salt marshes.

Background: Invasive plants are often confronted with heterogeneous environments and various stress factors during their secondary phase of invasion into more stressful habitats. A high tolerance to stress factors may allow exotics to successfully invade stressful environments. Ipomoea cairica, a vigorous invader in South China, has recently been expanding into salt marshes.

The effect of temperature and solvent on the morphology of microcapsules doped with a europium beta-diketonate complex.

Fluorescent microcapsules doped with a europium beta-diketonate complex were fabricated for the first time by stepwise adsorption of polyelectrolytes and europium complex using the layer-by-layer technique. The influence of temperature and solvent treatment on the morphology of the microcapsules was investigated. Intense red light emission of the microcapsules could be clearly observed by fluorescence microscopy before and after treatment.