ALEXANDRIA, Va., May 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,618,216, issued on May 5, was assigned to Anhui Agriculture University (Hefei City, China).

"Slope reinforcing and protecting device for hydraulic engineering" was invented by Chun Li (Hefei, China), Zhiliang Yang (Hefei, China), Zhaoxue Wu (Hefei, China), Xiaoyu Wang (Hefei, China) and Xiaole Wang (Hefei, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present disclosure provides a slope reinforcing and protecting device for hydraulic engineering. The device includes a connecting base body, where an upper end of the connecting base body is fixedly connected to a protection assembly, and a fastening assembly is arranged in the protection assembly...