Mr. Fang is now the owner of 36 greenhouses producing organic vegetables in the Gobi desert in Northwest China’s Gansu province. He is one of the beneficiaries of the Gobi Farming Program of Gansu province that is building rows of greenhouses in the desert to help transform local farming and alleviate poverty.

Grain production in Gansu is greatly affected by the climate and the output is unstable. Agricultural production there relies heavily on rivers, oases and groundwater irrigation. If traditional extensive agricultural production continued, it could gradually narrow the living space.

In 1995, a local entrepreneur ventured to use Israeli technologies to build greenhouses for vegetables growing in the desert. Such individual pilot projects encouraged the Gansu government to launch a provincial-level Gobi farming program in 2017 with a target to build up a controlled-environment agriculture of about 20,000 hectares by 2022. Some cities in the province, which include Fang’s village, have already been experimenting with Gobi farming for several years.

Despite the harsh environment, farming in the Gobi desert has its advantages: the extended amount of sunlight provides adequate energy for crops, a significant temperature difference between day and night helps crops accumulate nutrients and the Gobi’s hot and dry air means fewer pests and crop diseases. The Gobi greenhouses popping up in Gansu use drip and spray irrigation, which can cut water consumption by almost 50 percent compared to a normal farm. The greenhouses are also eco-friendly, as they use substrates for soilless cultivation recycled from rotten leaves, straw and cow and sheep feces.

With the greenhouses, Fang earns around 70,000 yuan annually. Data from Suzhou. district of Jiuquan showed the greenhouse program has helped bring an average revenue of about $ 72,300 per hectare to local farmers. Large scale greenhouse farming is an investment-intensive project and cannot be sustained only by government financial support. Therefore, the local government has been encouraging villagers such as Fang to take the lead to rent greenhouses or build their own.

It is not an easy task, and many villagers still want to wait and see. However, more and more are starting to join in,either to rum their own greenhouses or work as hired workers for greenhouse owners. Starting from managing four greenhouses in 2009, Fang now is also a partner of a greenhouse farming cooperative running 120 greenhouses.

The relatively low cost of large-scale land use in the Gobi desert have also encouraged large firms to start their Gobi farming pilot projects in Gansu. If the Gobi farming proves successful, it could provide experiences for countries in Central Asia linked with Gansu both by the ancient Silk Road as well as its modern version of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Ministers will offer rewards such as clothes vouchers (票卷) and discounted theme park tickets in return for exercising and eating healthily, under plans to solve Britain’s obesity crisis.

The anti-obesity project, which uses an app to help people make changes to their diet and physical activity, will launch in 2023, initially in a pilot (试验性的) project. Participants will wear Fitbit-style devices that can generate personalized health recommendations, such as increasing their step count, eating more fruit and vegetables and reducing portion (分量) size. Those increasing their exercise by taking part in organized events such as parkruns or walking to school or work may accumulate extra points in the app. The app could also be used to monitor supermarket spending, rewarding those who cut their calorie intake and buy healthier options. Participants will collect points for their healthy behaviors, which will unlock rewards that could include gym passes, clothes or food vouchers and discounts for shops, cinema or theme park tickets.

After a competitive tender (投标) process, HeadUp has been chosen to deliver the project, with 3 million pounds coming from the Department of Health and Social Care to provide incentives in the pilot. Evidence suggests financial incentives can improve rates of physical activity and inspire healthier eating. HeadUp will work with a range of organizations to provide rewards such as the vouchers, discounts and gift cards. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said: “This new pilot will pave the way for developing innovative ways to improve the lives of individuals, and also help to reduce stress on the National Health Services (NHS). This pilot is an excellent opportunity to find how best to inspire people to make small changes to their daily lives that will have a lasting positive impact on their health. ”

Few in Bangladesh would deny(否认) that their country has had remarkable success in getting kids into classrooms. Four decades ago, less than a third of children finished primary school. Today,80% do.

However, improving the quality of education has proved trickier. More than half of Bangladeshi ten-year-olds in school are not skilled in reading, according to the World Bank, and more than a quarter of those aged between 15 and 24 are not in education, employment or training.

In some respects, unimpressive outcomes have not held back Bangladesh. The economy has been growing at an annual rate of 6% for the past decade, reaching 8% in 2019. But that is because labor is plentiful and cheap, not because it is skilled. Bangladeshi laborers often earn less than the Indian workers in foreign countries.

Long-term growth will rely on moving from cheap to skilled labor, says Hossain Zillur Rahman of a research centre in Dhaka. “Those skills need to be created now.”

The government is shaking up the curriculum as a way to achieve that. The plans, which are due to be carried out by 2025, focus on shifting away from mindlessly memorizing textbooks towards building useful skills. All exams will be cancelled until third grade. Year-end public exams, which start in middle school, will wait until tenth grade.

The new curriculum is also designed to address the mismatch between education and the skills required in the economy. A choice of two practical subjects from such options as woodwork, software design, car repair and child care will be required for high-schoolers.

But changing the curriculum might not solve many of the other problems contributing to Bangladesh's poor learning outcomes. Teachers are poorly paid, trained and too few in number. Bangladesh has the largest class sizes in South Asia, with one teacher to 45 pupils in middle school.

“Some of the recently announced reforms amount to trying to run before learning to walk. How can software be taught well when the students cannot read well?” asks Mr. Rahman. “Many of the good curriculum changes introduced over the past decade are yet to be carried out.”