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This article describes the bioleaching of manganese nodules by thermophilic and mesophilic sulfuroxidizing bacteria, in which oxidized sulfur compounds are biologically produced from elemental sulfur added to liquid medium and are simultaneously used to leach nodules. The thermophile Acidianus brierleyi solubilized the manganese nodules faster at 65 ЊC than did the mesophiles Thiobacillus ferrooxidans and Thiobacillus thiooxidans at 30 ЊC. Leaching experiments with A. brierleyi growing on elemental sulfur were used to optimize various process parameters, such as medium pH, initial sulfur-liquid loading ratio, and initial cell concentration. The observed dependencies of the leaching rates at a pH optimum on the initial amounts of elemental sulfur and A. brierleyi cells were qualitatively consistent with model simulations for microbial sulfur oxidation. Under the conditions determined as optimum, the leaching of nodule particles (Ϫ330 ϩ 500 mesh) by A. brierleyi yielded 100 pct extraction of both copper and zinc within 4 days and high extractions of nickel (85 pct), cobalt (70 pct), and manganese (55 pct) for 10 days. However, the iron leaching was practically negligible.

The purpose of this paper is to present a method of active control for suppressing the vibration of a mechanically flexible cantilever beam which is subject to a distributed random disturbance and also a seismic input at the clamped end. First, the mathematical model of the flexible structure is established by a stochastic partial differential equation which describes the Euler-Bernoulli type distributed parameter system with internal viscous damping and subject to the seismic and distributed random inputs. Second, the distributed parameter model, which is considered as an infinite-dimensional system, is reduced to a finite-dimensional one by using the modal expansion, and split into the controlled part and the uncontrolled (residual) one. The principal approach is to regard the observation spillover due to uncontrolled part as a colored observation noise and construct an estimator, and then we construct the optimal control system. Finally, simulation studies are presented by using a real earthquake accelerogram data.

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