This is Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. Here is the news.

China has launched a campaign to tackle school bullying.

The State Council, the country's Cabinet, has sent a notice to local education bureaus. The campaign aims to curb bullying in primary and middle schools, including physical and verbal. Cyberspace bullying will also be targeted.

The campaign targets all primary and middle schools across the country, including middle vocational schools.

Campus bullying is a serious issue in China. Last year, a student was stabbed to death by three of his classmates in Guangdong Province. In another incident last year, a video clip showing schoolgirls slapping and kicking another girl in Jiangxi Province went viral online. The event triggered a widespread discussion of campus bullying.

According to the notice, the inspector will be responsible for monitoring all schools in his or her school district. The inspector is required to report any bullying to the school and to the local education inspection department.

Schools are required to invite public security and justice departments to provide anti-bullying education.

The notice is urging schools to create procedures to prevent and handle campus bullying as well as to clarify responsibilities of school staff members regarding the issue.

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Aiming to improve students' overall fitness, the education authority is calling for greater emphasis on physical education in school admissions and assessment of officials.

To encourage students to exercise more, the Ministry of Education is urging high schools and colleges to give more consideration in admissions to students' PE class attendance, fitness level and on-campus athletic performance. It also asks that the work evaluation of local education and school officials be partially based on students' results.

The call is in response to a regulation issued recently by the State Council, the country's Cabinet, aimed at highlighting physical education's role in China's education system.

Under the ministry's monitoring, if students' overall fitness is found to have declined for three consecutive years, the school leaders and local officials in charge will be punished, and will not be eligible for promotion.

PE tests are currently included in China's high school entrance exams. However, students' PE performance is not part of the scoring system of the national higher learning entrance exam, or gaokao. That has led students in senior grades to focus more on academics than sports, and schools to replace PE classes with extra tutoring.

A lack of physical exercise was partially blamed for students' fitness decline in the National Fitness Survey released last year.

You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.

The support ship of a new deep-sea submarine has been delivered to its owner, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou.

The 94-meter-long vessel has a full-load displacement of almost 6,300 tonnes, with a range of 10,000 nautical miles. It is equipped with 10 permanent research labs and two removable labs.

The ship will serve as the support ship for a new submarine currently under development and for future expeditions of sea floor trenches.

The vessel is scheduled to sail from Guangzhou to a port in Hainan Province for off-shore tests. If all goes well, the ship will sail to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the near future.

The new manned submarine can reach a depth of 4,500 meters under water and is likely to go through off-shore testing in the first half of next year.

China's current manned submarine, the "Jiaolong", reached a depth of 7,000 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012.

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A robot has been developed aiming to get enrolled in first-class Chinese universities next year. The robot will then try to get into prestigious and comparatively more difficult Peking University or Tsinghua in 2020, after beating 12th graders.

The robot will sit three exams, namely math, the Chinese language, and a comprehensive test of liberal arts including history and geography.

A company in Chengdu in southwest China won the bid for the artificial intelligence program on the robot's math test held by the Ministry of Science and Technology last year.

Like the other examinees, the robot will have to finish the tests in designated time. It will take its exams in a closed room without anyone else present, except for proctors and a notary.

The robot will be linked to a printer before each exam, and the electronic examination paper will be fed into the robot's program at the start of the examination. The robot will be totally disconnected from the internet and will solve the problems with its artificial intelligence program. Finally the answers will be outputted through the printer.

Experts say the robot is just one example of the boom in artificial intelligence after Google's AlphaGo beat a world-class player in the ancient board game Go in March.

You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing.

British scientists have discovered three earth-sized planets orbiting a dim and cool star 40 light years from Earth. The discovery was made by the University of Cambridge. It is believed to be the best place to start searching for extra-terrestrial life.

Didier Queloz is a professor from the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. He says the discovery of a planetary system around such a small star opens up a brand new avenue for research.

Scientists used a telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile, to view the star. Known as TRAPPIST-1, it is in the Aquarius constellation.

The scientists found that the dim and cool star faded slightly at regular intervals, indicating that several objects were transiting, or passing between the star and the Earth. Detailed analysis showed that there were three planets of a similar size to the Earth.

TRAPPIST-1 is an ultra-cool dwarf star, and as such is much cooler and redder than the Sun and is barely larger than Jupiter.

Such stars are very common in the Milky Way and very long-lived, but this is the first time that planets have been found around one of them.

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British researchers have developed the world's tiniest engine, just a few billionths of a meter in size. The engine uses light to power itself.

The researchers say the nanoscale engine can form the basis of future nano-machines that can navigate in water, sense the environment around them, and even enter living cells to fight disease. The researchers at the University of Cambridge published their study results in the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The prototype device is made of tiny charged particles of gold, bound together with temperature-responsive polymers in the form of a gel.

When the nano-engine is heated to a certain temperature with a laser, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second. As the polymer coatings expel all the water from the gel and collapse, it forces the gold nanoparticles to bind together into tight clusters.

But when the device is cooled down, the polymers take on water and expand again, and the gold nanoparticles are strongly and quickly pushed apart, like a spring.

The research suggests how to turn Van de Waals energy into elastic energy of polymers and release it very quickly. Van de Waals energy refers to the attraction between atoms and molecules.

You're listening to Special English. I'm Mark Griffiths in Beijing. You can access the program by logging on to newsplusradio.cn. You can also find us on our Apple Podcast. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let us know by e-mailing us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Now the news continues.

China's TV singing contest "Super Girls" will return to screens after a ten-year break.

The show is to be re-launched by Hunan Satellite TV, in Changsha, the capital of central China's Hunan Province. "Super Girls" is similar to "American Idol", offering ordinary people a chance at stardom.

Around 610,000 people have registered to enter the contest.

Women above the age of 18 can apply to be a contestants. They will be scored by the judging panel and public votes. Twenty finalists will be announced in June.

"Super Girls" was first produced in 2004, and at its height, 200 million people tuned in to watch the live, three-hour finale of "Super Girls 2005" show.

Now a celebrity, Li Yuchun was then a student with Sichuan Conservatory of Music. She won the contest in 2005. Li later appeared on the cover of Time Asia Magazine as one of the 25 Asian Heroes of the year. A set of stamps were issued featuring the singer.

Since the run-away success of the format, Chinese TV producers have competed to make similar shows, including the popular "Voice of China" series. However, there are concerns that the new "Super Girls" show may not be able to achieve its past glory.

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