A form of error processing is used to decode steganographic messages embedded in image and audio signals in the presence of distortion, which tends to introduce errors in steganographic data communication. The anode diffusion layer includes a water repellent layer disposed at the side of the anode catalyst layer and including a first conductive agent and a first water repellent agent; and a substrate layer disposed at the side of the anode-side separator, and the porosity of the substrate layer is higher at the downstream side than at the upstream side of the fuel flow. Further searching is performed for additional VHPT entries meeting certain coalescing and compatibility criteria. A pulling tab is situated on the identification tag adjacent one of the ends of the weakening line, which enables one to tear the tag, thus separating the first region from the second region. As a result, the query executed directly as machine executable code thereby avoiding runtime interpretation of the pieces in the execution plan.