ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,313,508, issued on May 27, was assigned to China National Silk Museum (Zhejiang, China) and Zhejiang Sci-Tech University (Zhejiang, China).

"Purification method for detection of strontium isotope in silk cultural relic" was invented by Yang Zhou (Zhejiang, China), Yong Liu (Zhejiang, China), Zhiqin Peng (Zhejiang, China), Bing Wang (Zhejiang, China), Hailing Zheng (Zhejiang, China), Hailiang Yang (Zhejiang, China), Liling Jia (Zhejiang, China), Hao Li (Zhejiang, China), Dan Yang (Zhejiang, China) and Rui Jia (Zhejiang, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A purification method for detection of a strontium isotope in a silk cultural relic...