Toyota unveils high-tech concept car ahead of show (AP)

TOKYO ? Toyota's president unveiled a futuristic concept car resembling a giant smartphone to demonstrate how Japan's top automaker is trying to take the lead in technology at the upcoming Tokyo auto show.

Toyota Motor Corp. will also be showing an electric vehicle, set for launch next year, and a tiny version of the hit Prius gas-electric hybrid at the Tokyo Motor Show, which opens to the public this weekend.

But the automaker's president, Akio Toyoda, chose to focus on the experimental Fun-Vii, which he called "a smartphone on four wheels" at Monday's preview of what Toyota is displaying at the show.

The car works like a personal computer and allows drivers to connect with dealers and others with a tap of a touch-panel door.

"A car must appeal to our emotions," Toyoda said, using the Japanese term "waku waku doki doki," referring to a heart aflutter with anticipation.

Toyota's booth will be a major attraction at the biannual Tokyo exhibition for the auto industry. Toyota said the Fun Vii was an example of what might be in the works in "20XX," giving no dates.

The Tokyo show has been scaled back in recent years as U.S. and European automakers increasingly look to China and other places where growth potential is greater. U.S. automaker Ford Motor Co. isn't even taking part in the show.

Toyota's electric vehicle FT-EV III, still a concept or test model, doesn't have a price yet, but is designed for short trips such as grocery shopping and work commutes, running 105 kilometers (65 miles) on one full charge.

The new small hybrid will be named Aqua in Japan, where it goes on sale next month. Overseas dates are undecided. Outside Japan it will be sold as a Prius.

Japan's automakers, already battered by years of sales stagnation at home, took another hit from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged part suppliers in northeastern Japan, and forced the car makers to cut back production.

The forecast of demand for new passenger cars in Japan this year has been cut to 3.58 million vehicles from an earlier 3.78 million by the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

Toru Hatano, auto analyst for IHS Automotive in Tokyo, believes fuel efficient hybrid models will be popular with Japanese consumers, and Toyota has an edge.

"The biggest obstacle has to do with costs, and you need to boost vehicle numbers if you hope to bring down costs" he said. "Toyota has more hybrids on the market than do rivals, and that gives Toyota an advantage."

Toyota has sold more than 3.4 million hybrids worldwide so far. Honda Motor Co., which has also been aggressive with hybrid technology, has sold 770,000 hybrids worldwide.

Toyota is also premiering a fuel-cell concept vehicle, FCV-R, at the show.

Zero-emission fuel cell vehicles, which run on hydrogen, have been viewed as impractical because of costs. Toyota said the FCV-R is a "practical" fuel-cell, planned for 2015, but didn't give its price.

"I felt as though my heart was going to break," Toyoda said of the turmoil after the March disaster. "It is precisely because we are in such times we must move forward with our dreams."

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Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/japan/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111128/ap_on_hi_te/as_japan_toyota

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Polio near-eradicated in India - Pakistan struggling

If the battle to eradicate polio were an action movie, this week would be the part where the good guys have racked up spectacular victories ? but look like they may lose anyway.

On the spectacular side, polio may be gone in India. Of the four countries where polio remained entrenched, the giant country was expected to be the last to fall. Yet its most recent case was in January this year, whereas by this time last year, it had had 40 cases.

The intestinal-borne virus hasn't even been found in sewage in India, says Oliver Rosenbauer, spokesman for the polio programme of the World Health Organization, even though the incidence of the disease usually peaks at this time of year.

The victory, says the WHO, is down to repeated, coordinated vaccination drives spearheaded by local officials in affected areas, and the use of a more efficient vaccine that only targets the strains circulating.

Don't stop now

Yet as long as polio persists somewhere, India must keep doggedly vaccinating. Experts meeting at the WHO in Geneva this month warned that if eradication fails now, it will be "the most expensive public health failure in history".

In Nigeria, another of the four, cases jumped fourfold this year from last, to 43. "It's worrying," says Rosenbauer, as Nigeria has re-infected three neighbouring, formerly polio-free countries. And the area of north-east Nigeria affected is increasingly hard for vaccination teams to access due to an Islamic militant group called Boko Haram.

Still, outbreaks in polio-free areas can be mopped up quickly. Tajikistan, for example, had 460 cases last year, vaccinated, and had none this year. And unlike 2003, when polio in Nigeria soared after local leaders opposed vaccination, those people are now on-side. Cases are down 95 per cent from 2009, and remain only where local leaders have not taken active responsibility for polio.

Faster, stronger

They are starting to, says Rosenbauer. "Our analysis shows the extent of local leadership correlates with viral persistence." That was key in Nigeria and India, he says. That, and switching from the old vaccine which contained all three strains of polio virus, to a new single-strain vaccine that induces faster, stronger immunity.

That may crack a third endemic country, Afghanistan, where polio persists in the south near Pakistan. Local violence prevented vaccination and nearly tripled cases this year, to 53. But the new vaccine can be given over one week instead of six, allowing vaccinators and, again, local leaders to negotiate lightning-strike vaccinations during lulls in the hostilities.

The real worry is Pakistan, where polio has spread all over from three strongholds in Karachi, Quetta and the north-west tribal area. Cases stand at 145 people infected so far this year, up from 113 last year. In the first two regions the key again will be local leadership, which may be bolstered with a new national vaccination initiative this year, says Rosenbauer.

The wild north-west of the country will be harder ? especially as the WHO's polio campaign, as ever, is short of cash. A quarter of its $2.2 billion budget for 2011-2012 has not yet been donated.

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