ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,282,037, issued on April 22, was assigned to Shaanxi Zhonglin Asphalt Pavement Maintenance Technology Co. Ltd (Xi'an, China).

"Automatic and rapid detection method of gradation for asphalt mixture and automatic detection device" was invented by Xue Gui (Xi'an, China), Dengcheng Ma (Xi'an, China), Zhang Gui (Xi'an, China), Hanwan Jiang (Xi'an, China), Xinyao Li (Xi'an, China), Gang Fang (Xi'an, China), Yunxiang Wang (Xi'an, China), Zexin Liu (Xi'an, China), Qunde Li (Xi'an, China), Jinbo Liu (Xi'an, China), Nian Feng (Xi'an, China), Ruihua Zhao (Xi'an, China) and Meng Liu (Xi'an, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An automatic and rapid ...