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e-Learning engineering courses with online experiments are attracting a great deal of attention because of the flexibility they provide in both teaching and learning. This paper has described an Internet-based teaching and experiment system for control engineering (ITESCE) that provides students with online course material, a simulator, an online control experiment using an arm robot, and the ability to store and search simulation and experimental results. To implement the functions required by the course and to facilitate connection to the Internet, the ITESCE is based on a standard browser/server architecture with three layers and employs multithreading, Java applets, and Java database connectivity. Background control subsystems handle the real-time control of experiments, and a network server handles communication with clients and with background control subsystems. A database stores simulation and experimental results. The course covers a variety of control methods, and students can try them out through online simulations and experiments. To enhance realism, a Web camera takes a video of an experiment and streams it to a student's PC in real time. Index Terms--Browser/server (B/S) architecture, control engineering, database, e-learning, Java applet, Java database connectivity (JDBC), multithreading, online experiment, real-time control.

The crystal-engineering study of coordination polymers and a molecular-looped complex containing two dipyridyl-amide ligands, 1,3-bis-pyridin-4-ylmethyl urea and N,N'-bis-4-methylpyridyl oxalamide is presented. The results shows that the crystal-engineering study might be carried out by taking advantage of the different structural flexibilities of dipyridyl-amide ligands, metal salts with different anions, metal ions with different coordination geometries and the geometric isomerism.

The importance and feasibility of applying a joint signal processing and cryptographic approach to multimedia encryption is discussed, to address the access control issues unique to multimedia applications. Two atomic encryption operations are proposed, and experiments show that by strategically integrating selective value encryption, intrabitplane shuffling and spatial permutation, the resulting system can achieve security, friendliness to delegate processing and bitrate overhead.

An iterative alignment-minimization algorithm is proposed to perform curve registration and to deal with nonuniqueness of B-spline control points, in order to achieve robust fingerprint detection. The experiments demonstrate the robustness of the proposed data-hiding algorithm against various attacks, such as collusion, cropping, geometric transformations, printing and scanning, and some of their combinations.

The collusion resistance of a fingerprinting system employing Gaussian distributed fingerprints and orthogonal modulation is studied. The maximum detector and the thresholding detector for colluder identification is introduced and the collusion resistance of a system to the averaging collusion attack for the performance criteria represented by the probability of a false negative and the probability of a false positive is analyzed.

The average collusion attack and several basic nonlinear collusions on independent Gaussian fingerprints are investigated, and their effectiveness and impact on the perceptual quality is studied. A preprocessing technique of the extracted fingerprints specifically for collusion scenarios to improve the detection performance is proposed.

A study on five male eating disorder cases with four cases of anorexia nervosa and 1 case of normal weight bulimia nervosa were examined within a period of 2 years in Wuhan city in central China. The results showed that out of five cases three appear to have recovered and one substantially showed signs of improvement.

The two methanogens, Methanobacterium formicicum and Methanosarcina mazeii contribute in the production of extracellular polymers of methanogenic granules. The extracellular polysaccharides produced by M. formicicum is composed of rhamnose, mannose, galactose, glucose and amino sugars. Ribose, galactose, glucose and glucosamine are the sugars present in M. mazeii. The polymer production by M. formicicum is influenced by growth temperature, substrates and nitrogen and phosphate concentrations.

A testing procedure to diagnose whether the stochastic dynamic programming (SDP) models for reservoir operations will converge is presented. Theoretically, the stability of SDP can be diagnosed by checking whether a coefficient matrix, connected with the existence and uniqueness of solutions of transition probabilities for the inflows, is linearly independent. The steady-state SDP model of reservoir operations is guaranteed after the SDP convergence has been approved. If the rank of the coefficient matrix is the same as the number of inflow states, there is precisely one solution for the steady-state distribution of inflows and SDP convergence will be reached. Otherwise, the SDP model is divergent.

Membrane-impermeant sulfhydryl blockers are capable of inhibiting the cleavage of membrane-bound disulfide-linked conjugates, indicating that the cell surface possesses a reductive function mediated by surface sulfhydyls. An investigation was conducted to identify the mechanism involved in this reaction. The results showed that protein disulfide-isomerase (PDI) is the enzyme responsible for cleaving the disulfides of membrane-bound macromolecules. Anti-PDI antibodies and bacitracin, a known PDI inhibitor, could inhibit this reaction.

The practicality of developing highly-dechlorinating anaerobic methanogenic granules and their performance in treating wastewaters with high pentachlorophenol (PCP) concntrations were evaluated. A mixture of acetate, propionate, butyrate and methanol were used as the carbon source for the development of the granules in a laboratory-scale anaerobic upflow sludge blanket reactor. Higher PCP sensitivity was demonstrated by syntrophic propionate degraders and acetate-utilizing methanogens compared to syntrophc butyrate degraders.

Pyrosequencing is combined with a strict indicator species statistical analysis to test if bacteria has specifically responded to ethanol injection that successfully promoted dissimilatory uranium(VI) reduction in the subsurface of a uranium contamination plume. A false-discovery-rate approach is implemented to discard false-positive results by chance, given the large amount of data compared.

Magnetic properties and spin state transfer in Ga doping perovskite cobalities [La.sub.0.7][Ca.sub.0.3]([Co.sub.1-y][Ga.sub.y])[O.sub.3] are examined. The analysis of the effective moment of Co ions has implied that Ga doping has stabilized Co-ion high spin state.

High yield synthesis of a series of [beta]-formyl-BODIPYs from tetramethyl-BODIPYs via the Vilsmeier-Haack reaction is reported. The reaction is further functionalized by using a Knoevenagel condensation to generate other novel BODIPYs.

In situ weight-loss method with a Kaufman ion source, Faraday cup, and quartz crystal microbalance are used for studying the ion sputtering yields for Ru, Mo, and Si under [Ar.sup.+] ion bombardment in the near-threshold energy range. The results have provided accurate data sets for theoretical modeling in the near-threshold sputter regime and are relevant for optical surfaces exposed to plasmas in extreme ultraviolet photolithography.

[(Ba.sub.0.6][Sr.sub.0.4]).sub.92.5%[K.sub.7.5%]Ti[O.sub.3] (BSKT) thin films doped by Mn are fabricated by the sol-gel method on a Pt/Ti[O.sub.2]/Si[O.sub.2]/Si substrate and the structure and surface morphology of Mn-doped BSKT thin films are examined. The studies have shown that the Mn concentration in Mn doped BSKT thin films have a strong influence on material properties including surface morphology and dielectric and tunable properties.

Microbial enumeration, 16S rRNA gene clone libraries and chemical analysis were used for examining the in situ biological reduction and immobilization of uranium (VI) at a highly-contaminated site. Findings reveal the identification of key bacterial groups associated with successful reduction of U(VI) in the subsurface.

The specific and quantitative 16S rRNA gene-based approaches are designed for assessing the environmental distribution and abundance of Geobacter lovleyi strain SZ-like Geobacter spp. in uranium- and chlorinated ethene-contaminated sites and also bioremediation-monitoring efforts. The findings have shown that the Geobacter lovleyi strain SZ-specific tools are useful for monitoring bioremediation efforts at uranium- and/or chlorinated solvent-impacted sites.

A probe-based technology that is uniquely capable of profiling the selectivity of kinase inhibitors against a broad range of protein kinases and other nucleotide binding proteins directly in native proteomes is described. The ability to broadly profile kinase activities in native proteomers offers an exciting prospect for both target discovery and inhibitor selectivity profiling.

The combination of a standard velocity map imaging setup with three different slicing methods is demonstrated for the dissociation of O2(X(super 3)sigma(sub g)(super -)) at 157 nm leading to the O((super 1)D) + O((super 3)P) channel and I2(X(super 1)sigma(sub g)) at 490 nm leading to the I((super 2)P(sub 3/2)) + I((super 2)P(sub 1/2)) channel.

Real-time operations of the Tanshui River reservoirs can be evaluated from the individual and the national perspective in considering social cost-benefit analysis. The objective functions can be modified so that the assessment of benefits and costs is based on the willingness to pay. Market prices can be corrupted by taxes, wage factors and other economic variables, which should be considered in the evaluation. Interpretation of results would determine the model's effective assessment since all evaluation models are reliable.