NikkeiBP Presents Thirteenth "NikkeiBP Technology Award"

Tokyo -- April 4, 2003 -- Nikkei Business Publications has today held a commendation ceremony in Tokyo to award the technologies that won the thirteenth NikkeiBP Technology Awards. Established in 1991, the aim of the award is to contribute to Japan's technological development by giving recognition to breakthrough technologies that lead to fundamental change in industry and in society. This year, Dr. Shoji Tanaka, Vice President of International Superconductivity Technology Center, chaired the screening committee of twenty-one members representing the most notable academic and research organizations in Japan.

Among the technologies developed during 2002, the Grand Prize of the 2003 NikkeiBP Technology Awards went to Toyota Motor and Honda Motor for their respective inventions of a technology that made fuel cell vehicles commercially viable. The next-generation hydrogen-powered cars were developed for the first time in the automobile history to replace the existing internal combustion-engines. With their only byproduct being water, the market-ready fuel cell vehicles have zero tailpipe emissions and a heat-efficiency of 50%.

In addition to the Grand Prize, fourteen Section Prizes were presented in the seven sections of electronics, info-communications, consumer IT, mechanical systems, construction, healthcare/biotechnology and ecology. The award winning technologies are as follows:

Grand Prize
Technology that realized commercially viable fuel cell vehicles

Section Prizes

Electronics
"Mu-chip," the world's smallest wireless IC tag
Ultraviolet light emitting diode (LED)

Info-communications
"Earth Simulator," an ultra high-speed vector parallel computing system
"DayDa. Laboo," an ultra high-speed database engine based on a unique linear filter method (LFM)

Consumer IT
"System LCD," a liquid crystal panel using CG silicon technology
"EOS-1Ds," a single-lens reflex digital camera employing an 11.1 million-pixel CMOS sensor, which captures a full 35 mm frame

Mechanical Systems
Battery-less electric four-wheel-drive
"easy driver" that facilitates drafting of electronic manuals

Construction
Incombustible wood
Design and construction technology of bridges using "Ductal," ultra-high performance fiber-reinforced concrete

Healthcare/Biotechnology
High-speed atomic force microscope that captures the nanostructure by video
Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), a novel gene amplification technology

Ecology
Technology that enables recycling of used concrete at construction sites
Ink-jet technology applicable to creating organic EL displays, plasma displays and circuitry for a semiconductor chip

For further details, please contact:
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