On the 23^rd of July, 2003, AIST Tsukuba had an honor to welcome His and Her Imperial Highness Prince and Princess Hitachi, who attended the 45^th Natural Park Festival. The visit was a part of the inspection tour of Ibaraki prefecture.

Despite the gloomy rainy season weather, the Imperial Couple took a tour of the Geological Museum affiliated to AIST, following the introduction of the Museum by Dr. Masahiro Aoki, the director.The exhibitions included "History of the Earth", "Mineral Resources and Marine Geology" and "Geological Phenomena and Our Living"

AIST Tsukuba was opened to the public on July 23, 2003 and the center was bustling with 4,012 visitors. This number exceeds that for last year, partly thanks to the cool weather during a rainy season.

The research achievements were on display and some were demonstrated at “Hot Topic Corner”, whereas “Dream Labo” and “Challenge Corner” allowed the visitors to experience scientific experiments. Everyone from primary school children to senior citizens had fun with the mysteries of science.

As a special event, Dr. Hideki Shirakawa, honorary professor of Tsukuba University, made a lecture on his endeavors, that led him to win the Novel Prize in Chemistry. The audience included many children fascinated with his talk given in an easy to understand manner with a hint of humor.

A number of primary and junior high school students were tackling the challenge of scientific experiments, eagerly asking questions to the instructors. The public open day of this year was a great success, providing the opportunity to inject the “Science DNA” to the younger generation.

Among the achievements of Dr. Ishihara was his proposition of "granite series". This had an exceptional influence over the international community of granite studies and is highly acclaimed as one of the outstanding developments that have been produced in Japan and disseminated to the world. The method to classify granites into magnetite and ilmenite series, as Dr. Ishihara proposes, is based on the state of oxidization and reduction of granite magma, which can be recognized by the quantity of contained magnetite. Therefore, these two series can be easily identified in the open field, by means of measuring magnetic susceptibility.

In addition to this, the clarity of classification methodology in terms of both component recognition and recording, was largely influential on the research of granites not only of the Japanese archipelago but also of circum-Pacific magmatic zone. Dr. Ishihara himself has been advancing his research to the earliest part of the Earth histry in order to verify the classification theory of granite series in collaboration with geologists from Chile, China, Australia and other countries.

Dr. Ishihara was appointed as an emeritus advisor of AIST in April 2001 and has been publishing a number of academic papers and giving guidance to junior researchers..

AIST ran a booth with six Japanese bio-venture enterprises at JETRO Japan Pavilion, where a video was shown to present the outline of the relevant research projects and venture businesses in the field of biotechnology. Moreover there were displays of the research achievements which were aimed at technology transfer. The research activities were introduced to a number of visitors through the exhibitions at both the AIST booth and the Japan Pavilion, and some discussions were made to further cooperative research in order to nurture and develop one of the most promising technologies.