February 22

In 1630, popcorn was introduced to the English colonists by an Indian named Quadequina who brought it in deerskin bags as his contribution at their first Thanksgiving dinner.

In 1946, Dr Selman Abraham Waksman announced his discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin, the first specific antibiotic effective against tuberculosis. For this work, he was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize. Dr. Waksman was born in Ukraine.

News

30.11.2011 - Major breakthrough in enhancement of the global patent system
In an unprecedented move to eliminate linguistic barriers in public access to patent information, the EPO and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) at their annual bilateral co-operation meeting held in Chongqing, signed an agreement which will have a striking impact for the improvement of the global patent system and the dissemination of technological information in the world.

Both offices agreed to work together to assure that by next year automatic Chinese-English machine translation tools for patents are available to the public. The service will be free of charge and easily accessible through Internet. With this agreement new possibilities are offered to innovators and users of the patent system to get access to a huge part of technological information hidden nowadays due to the language barrier.

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