TIANJIN, Nov.23 (Xinhua)- Chinese scientists have signed a deal to establish a commercial animal cloning center in the northern port city of Tianjin, making the controversial science closer to mainstream acceptance.

    The plant in the Tianjin Economic and Technological Development Area (TEDA), a government-sponsored business development park, will clone animals including sniffer and pet dogs, beef cattle and racehorses. Its main building is already under construction and due to be put to use in the near future, said a spokesman on Monday.

    With an investment of 200 million yuan, the center will be jointly built by Sinica, Peking University's Institute of Molecular Medicine, the Tianjin International Joint Academy of Biomedicine, and the Republic of Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation.

    It will produce 100,000 cattle embryos a year initially, eventually increasing to 1 million, said Xu Xiaochun, board chairman of Boyalife Group, based in Wuxi. Chinese farmers are struggling to produce enough beef cattle to meet market demand, Xu said. The center, the largest ever worldwide, will also include a gene storage area and a museum, he added.

    Scientists have cloned mice, cattle and other animals since the world's first cloned sheep, Dolly, was born on July 5,1996 iii Britain. Since 2000, Chinese scientists have cloned sheep, cattle and pigs. China's first commercial cloning company was established in September 2014 in Shandong with the birth of three pure-blooded Tibetan mastiff puppies.

    Before this, cloning in China was limited to scientific research. More and more companies have shown interest in investing in the technology for commercial use, especially animal husbandry (饲养).

    Now Glen doesn't like to think what might have happened had he and his best friends, Ray Wightman and Chris Johnson, picked their usual path along a rocky outcrop－the faster route to Johnson s home on Triangle Mountain. They were heading there after school that day－April 14, 1999－to play street hockey in Johnson's driveway. There were other lucky twists, too: not stopping at the shops to get a cola« as they usually did; hearing the strange cry.

    It was 3:30 pm. The three teens were laughing and talking when suddenly they heard a strange cry coming from the ditch(沟渠) across the road. Crossing to take a look, they found an Adidas gym bag sitting deep in the icy water. They climbed down the steep bank and pulled the bag from the water, expecting to find abandoned cats or dogs inside. Instead, the boys found a trembling newborn girl. Wrapped in an old blanket, wearing a thin nightshirt, she was almost blue, her lips shaking from the cold and her crying.

    The boys couldn't have been more astonished. They knew this one needed to get warm and dry, although they didn't know much about babies. Ray dug through his gym bag and wrapped her in a T-shirt. “We didn't know what to do,” said Glen. “I didn't think any of us had really held a baby before.” So the three stood beside the ditch, dumbfounded, taking turns to hold the baby to their chests to keep her warm.

    “We knew it was no use walking up to Ray's house, because his mum was working and no one would be home. We figured we'd have a better chance just staying by the road and flagging down someone.” So they stood there and waited.

    A car drove by and the boys caught the driver's attention, telling her that they had found a baby. The woman then drove off to get help. When the police and ambulance came 20 minutes later, the teens were told the baby was probably two or three hours old and had perhaps been in the ditch for an hour or more. They were also told that they had saved her life and that given 10-20 minutes more in the cold water, she probably would be drowned.

    L.S. Lowry Exhibition

    Some 30 oil paintings and artworks on paper by British artist, L.S. Lowry (1887-1976), are on display at the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts. It's the first-ever solo exhibition of the artist's work outside the UK. Lowry is one of Britain's most famous artists, and was a close observer of his country's social life in the era of industrialization and modernization. His works mainly depict (描绘) ordinary people on streets, in factories, parks and football fields. It has been said that the depiction of modern life by Lowry's works was permeated (洋溢) with an atmosphere of sadness and loneliness, but also with respect and a sense of humor.

    Date: November 15 to December 16, 9 am to 7 pm (closed on Mondays)

    Venue: Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts

    Address: 15 Huju Road North, Gulou District, Nanjing

    Admission: Free

    Call 025-8349-8693 for details

    Golden Songs of Teresa Teng Concert

    Teresa Teng (1953-1995) was an influential Chinese pop singer from Taiwan who was known for her folk songs and romantic ballads. Her voice and songs are instantly recognizable throughout the whole of Asia and in areas with large Asian populations. Chen Yajuan, a Japanese-Chinese female singer, will perform Teng's classic songs, including Moon Represents My Heart and When Will You Come Back Again?

    Date: December 20, 7:30 pm

    Venue: Shanghai Oriental Art Center

    Address: 425 Dingxiang Road

    Tickets: 80 yuan to 580 yuan

    Call 021-6132-6586 for details

    The 20^th Anniversary of Riverdance

    This year welcomes the 20th anniversary of Riverdance, which is being marked with a world tour. This 20th anniversary version will have a new stage setting, and when it tours in China it will add some local elements like taking traditional Chinese folk songs, Love Song of Kangding and My Motherland, as accompaniments.

    Date: January 13 to 18, 7:30 pm

    Venue: Shanghai Culture Square

    Address: 597 Fuxing Road Middle

    Tickets: 80 yuan to 800 yuan

    Call 021-6472-9000 for details

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    A long-term American study shows the importance of early education for poor children. The study is known as the Abecedarian(初步的) Project. It involved more than one-hundred young children from poor families in North Carolina.

    Half of the children attended an all-day program at a high-quality childcare center. The center offered educational, health and social programs. Children took part in games and activities to increase their thinking and language skills and social and emotional development. The program also included health foods for the children.

    The children attended the program from when they were a few weeks old until the age of five years. The other group of children did not attend the childcare center. After the age of five, both groups attended public school.

    Researchers compared the two groups of children. When they were babies, both groups had similar results in tests for mental and physical skills. However, from the age of eighteen months, the children in the educational child care program did much better in tests.

    The researchers tested the children again when they were twelve and fifteen years old. The tests found that the children who had been in the childcare center continued to have higher average test results. These children did much better on tests of reading and mathematics.

    A few years ago, organizers of the Abecedarian Project tested the students again. At the time, each student was twenty-one years old. They were tested for thinking and educational ability, employment, parenting and social skills. The researchers found that the young adults who had the early education still did better in reading and mathematics tests. They were more than two times as likely to go to college or to have completed college. In addition, the children who received early education were older on average, when their first child was born.

    The study offers more evidence that learning during the first months and years of life is important for all later development.

    The researchers of the Abecedarian Project believe their study shows a need for lawmakers to spend money on public early education. They believe these kinds of programs could reduce the number of children who do not complete school and are unemployed.

    A study based on data gathered by a NASA sensor has revealed China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are primarily responsible for making the Earth greener over the past two decades.

    The study, published on Feb 11 in the journal Natural Sustainability, has found that since 2000 the Earth's green leaf area has increased by over 5 million square kilometers. That's an area equivalent to the total of the Amazon rainforests. "China and India account for one-third of the greening, considering the general idea of land degradation (退化) in populous countries from overexploitation," said Chen Chi from Boston University, lead author of the study.

    The effect mainly comes from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries, NASA said in a statement. China is the source of a quarter of the planet's increase in forest area, despite having only 6.6 percent of the world's vegetated (固定植被的)area, according to the study. Forest conservation and expansion programs account for 42 percent of the increase, and another 32 percent come from intensive agriculture of food crops, NASA said. While raising their green leaf areas, China and India have also greatly increased their food production through" multiple cropping" practices, where a field is replanted and crops are harvested several time each year. "Production of grains, vegetable, fruits and more have increased by about 35 to 40 percent since 2000 to feed their large population," NASA said.

    Over the past decades, China has made great efforts to green the land. In 1978, the central government launched a national-level forestation project-the Three North Shelterbelt Forest Program. By the end of 2017, the forest coverage rate among the regions in the project reached 13.57 percent, compared to 5.05 percent 40 years ago. In a greening project, Kubuqi Desert, seventh largest in the country, has seen one-third of its area covered by vegetation during the past three decades thanks to forestation efforts.