SEED OF KNOWLEDGE: Elementary school students observe specimens during a migratory bird awareness campaign in Yanshan County, Hebei Province, on April 9 (MA NING)

Nurseries

Southwest China's Guizhou Province is to establish 800 nurseries for "left-behind" children, to ease their psychological problems caused by the absence of parents.

The nurseries, to be built in rural boarding schools, are expected to be completed before the end of 2014, the Guizhou Education Department said in a statement on April 4.

The facilities will help create a better environment for healthy growth by providing good physical conditions as well as sufficient psychological intervention, according to the statement.

The provincial education authority will award 20,000 yuan ($3,220) to each nursery that operates well in the future, it added.

"Left-behind" children are those who remain in rural homes while their parents go to work in cities. The children are usually taken care of by their grandparents or other relatives.

Guizhou had about 2.4 million "left-behind" children in 2013 due to the large number of outbound local laborers, a report by the Guizhou Academy of Social Sciences showed.

Government Microblogs

The number of microblog accounts operated by government departments and individual officials increased by 46 percent in 2013, according a report issued on April 8 by the E-Government Research Center with the Chinese Academy of Governance. It has issued the report annually since 2011.

The growth rate was mild compared with the 249 percent recorded in 2012 and 776 percent in 2011, the report noted. It attributed the slowdown to users shifting to new social network tools such as WeChat, an instant messaging application claiming to have about 400 million active users.

Verified government accounts on the four top microblog services in China—Sina, Tencent, People.com.cn and Xinhuanet—totaled around 258,700 at the end of 2013.

About 70.8 percent of them were operated by government departments and the rest were individual users whose identities were verified to be officials.

Governments in richer regions and bigger cities have proved more inclined to communicate with the people through microblogging, according to the report.

Among various government departments, police have been the most active, according to the report. Four out of the top 10 government microblog accounts were operated by police departments.

Cloned Tree

A 5,000-year-old cypress tree said to have been planted by the Yellow Emperor, the mythological sovereign considered the common ancestor of all Chinese, has been cloned, scientists said on April 5.

The 20-meter-high tree is in the Xuanyuan Temple near the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, also known as Huangdi, in Huangling County, northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

Created using asexual reproduction methods such grafting, eight saplings from the ancient tree are growing well, said Jiang Zeping, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Forestry.

The project started in April 2013 when scientists from the academy obtained samples and cultured more than 1,500 clones.

Aging has put the ancient cypress in danger, said Peng Hong, deputy head of the Forestry Department of Shaanxi. "It is important to preserve the genes of millennial cypress trees," Peng said.

"Luckily, we have been successful and a second clone can be made from the saplings after three to five years," Jiang said.

The project is of great significance in conservation of genetic resources and protecting rare ancient trees, according to scientists.