The explosive growth of multimedia data transmission has generated a critical need for efficient, high-capacity image databases, as well as powerful search engines to retrieve image data from them. This book brings together contributions by an international all-star team of innovators in the field who share their insights into all key aspects of image database and search engine construction. Readers get in-depth discussions of the entire range of crucial image database architecture, indexing and retrieval, transmission, display, and user interface issues. And, using examples from an array of...

This monograph evolved over a period of nine years from a series of papers and presentations addressing the subject of passive vibration control of mechanical s- tems subjected to broadband, transient inputs. The unifying theme is Targeted - ergy Transfer - TET, which represents a new and unique approach to the passive control problem, in which a strongly nonlinear, fully passive, local attachment, the Nonlinear Energy Sink - NES, is employed to drastically alter the dynamics of the primary system to which it is attached. The intrinsic capacity of the properly - signed NES to promote rapid...