CRI听力:China's State Science and Tech Awards Handed Out

This year's State Science and Technology Awards were presented to 295 scientific projects, a 21 percent decrease compared to 2011.

This is the second time that the most honorable award, the State Supreme Science and Technology Award, has been left vacant since 2004.

Chen Zhimin, vice head of the Office for Science and Technology Awards, explained why it was left vacant.

"According to the relevant rules for the award, the laureates for the State Supreme Science and Technology Award should be less than 2 people. This means that the outcomes of either two people, one person or nobody receiving the prize are all consistent with the regulations."

To receive the top award, the project should bring a major breakthrough in the frontiers of science as well as enormous social or economic benefits.

Apart from the State Supreme Science and Technology Award, 4 more awards are also included such as the State Natural Science Award, State Technological Invention Award, National Science and Technology Progress Award and International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award.

A quantum information research team won the first prize in the State Natural Sciences for their project concerning the multi-photon entanglement and interferometry which further developed the quantum key distribution technology.

The team leader, 45-year-old Pan Jianwei from the University of Science and Technology of China, explained that their project could be significant to cyberspace security.

"The quantum key distribution could make communication more secure since those encrypted contents will be hard to decipher. On one hand, the technology will make the Internet more efficient, since users will obtain their information much more effectively. On the other hand, it will make the Internet much safer."

The team is also the first to achieve the simultaneous quantum teleportation of two inherent properties of a fundamental particle.

Pan said the quantum teleportation will bring a lot of benefits in the future.

"For example, if I employ Tianhe-2 to solve the system of linear equations of 24th power of ten, it will cost about 100 years. However, if I use quantum computer working trillions of times every second, it will cost me only one second. Therefore, with the help of quantum information, we can improve a lot in the related fields in gene analysis, oil exploration and weather forecasts."

7 foreign nationals from countries including the U.S., Japan and Sweden received this year's International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award.

Since the launch of the State Supreme Science and Technology Award in 2000, 25 scientists have received the award including Wang Xuan, the inventor of a computerized laser photo typesetting system for Chinese characters, and Yuan Longping, the Father of Hybrid Rice.

For CRI, I'm Xie Cheng.