ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,420,283, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to Kao Corp. (Tokyo).
"Specimen-preserving implement" was invented by Shinya Itamochi (Odawara, Japan), Masahiro Oka (Sumida-ku, Japan), Shuhei Matsumoto (Odawara, Japan) and Takenori Shiraiwa (Odawara, Japan).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A specimen-preserving implement including, a medium-containing section capable of accommodating a medium holding a specimen, a degradation inhibitor in liquid form that inhibits degradation of a sample to be tested contained in the specimen, an agent holder capable of being impregnated with the degradation inhibitor, and a containing section of a desiccant. Th...