
‘Too good to refuse': why world's top flying insect detective Jason Chapman chose China
Chapman's decision to leave the UK for a full-time position at a Chinese university reflects the country's expanding global influence in research.
This includes a cutting-edge radar that can track flying insects, technology that the acclaimed behavioural ecologist could not resist.
Substantial financial support and a commitment to
agricultural research have helped China to develop world-class entomological radar technology, Chapman said.
'China is now certainly the world leader in radar entomology, with many people working in this field,' said Chapman, who worked at the University of Exeter before moving to Nanjing Agricultural University (NJAU) in June.
Chapman's research focuses on the evolution of insect migration strategies and the impact of long-range movements. When he joined Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom as a postdoctoral fellow in 1999, his lab was one of the few teams worldwide pioneering the application and research of entomological radar.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


South China Morning Post
7 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
University of Hong Kong calls Pok Fu Lam site best option for its innovation hub
The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has said that Pok Fu Lam is the best location for building its innovation hub compared with alternatives such as the Northern Metropolis, arguing the site could yield the fastest outcomes and see the first section open its doors as early as 2032. Advertisement The university's stance was shared in a report submitted on Tuesday to the Town Planning Board about a revised development plan for HKU's global innovation centre. An initial proposal had suggested that the centre be built on a government-owned green belt along Pok Fu Lam Road, but the move faced strong opposition from residents last year due to concerns about traffic, the environmental impact and a lack of consultation. The plan was later revised to preserve more than 75 per cent of the green belt, with most of the innovation hub to be built on a nearby residential plot, while maintaining a distance of more than 100 metres (328 feet) from Upper Baguio Villa. The revised plan involves a site area of 40,000 square metres and a gross floor area of 190,000 square metres, with both representing a 15 per cent reduction from the previous proposal. Advertisement


South China Morning Post
8 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Alibaba expert envisions AI agents transforming daily life in 5 years
Digital colleagues will be a part of everyday life in the next five years, according to an artificial intelligence (AI) expert from Alibaba Group Holding's cloud computing unit, who envisions an ecosystem of application developers creating AI agents to cater to consumer and business demands. 'Agentic AI is very popular in the industry right now,' said Huang Fei, vice-president of Alibaba Cloud and head of the company's Tongyi Natural Language Processing Lab. Speaking at the China Conference 2025 organised by the Post on Tuesday, he was referring to systems that use AI to act autonomously on behalf of users to pursue goals or complete tasks. The future AI landscape would be dominated by a small number of fundamental model providers and a larger number of developers producing such agents, Huang said. His comments underscored Alibaba's strategy of becoming a key provider of AI infrastructure and fundamental models. The company's Qwen series of open-source large language models has become popular, and Alibaba has pledged at least US$53 billion over the next three years to invest in AI infrastructure. Alibaba owns the Post. Hong Kong would be able to play a role in AI development thanks to its capital resources, research capabilities, access to mainland China, government support and legal framework, Huang said. 'Hong Kong has top-tier researchers and universities, alongside the Hong Kong government also providing a lot of support for innovation, alongside the city's strong legal system,' he said. 'It is able to provide not only the capital resources, but also the human resources and the carbon for AI development.'


South China Morning Post
9 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
China's ‘telepathy' radio could make combat units invisible for electronic warfare edge
Since they debuted in World War I, military radios have played a vital role in sending strategic messages via electromagnetic waves, but it has always been a deadly game of hide-and-seek. The devices present a dilemma: crucial communication at the risk of simultaneously broadcasting the location of their users to adversaries, exposing forces to interception, jamming and missile strikes. But the cat-and-mouse game may soon be over. Chinese researchers have claimed a breakthrough that enables high-speed battlefield communication while ensuring the units sending signals remain in absolute radio silence. One expert, who described the communication technology as 'telepathy', said it could potentially make People's Liberation Army combat units invisible in electronic warfare. Led by senior engineer Liu Kaiyu with the Aerospace Information Research Institute, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the team detailed the innovation in a paper in the peer-reviewed Journal of Radars on June 24. Liu's team developed a system that allows tanks, warships or aircraft to send vast amounts of data without emitting any active signals.