ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,566,137, issued on March 3, was assigned to CENTRALESUPELEC (Gif-sur-Yvette, France) and UNIVERSITE DE LORRAINE (Nancy, France).

"Facility for detecting at least one characteristic parameter of a medium, and method for detecting at least one such characteristic parameter" was invented by Patrick Perre (Palaiseau, France), Ninel Kokanyan (Valmunster, France), Cedric Guerin (Reims, France), Mahamadou Mounkaila (Bazancourt, France), Emilie Michiels (Prunay, France) and Victor Pozzobon (Rethel, France).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The facility for detecting at least one characteristic parameter of a medium (M), has A DEVICE (3) illuminating...