ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 14 -- United States Patent no. 12,681,203, issued on July 14, was assigned to SHANDONG UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Qingdao, China).

"Coal spontaneous combustion downhole detection system and method based on self-potential method" was invented by Xiangming Hu (Qingdao, China), Hao Dong (Qingdao, China), Baiqian Wu (Qingdao, China), Shijian Yu (Qingdao, China), Shengli Wang (Qingdao, China), Yong Zhou (Qingdao, China), Wenqi Shao (Qingdao, China), Wei Wang (Qingdao, China), Mingyue Wu (Qingdao, China), Fusheng Wang (Qingdao, China), Lijun Li (Qingdao, China), Haozhen Xuan (Qingdao, China) and Zhiyuan Yang (Qingdao, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The present...