Musical Sound, Instruments, and Equipment offers a basic understanding of sound, musical instruments and music equipment, geared towards a general audience and non-science majors. The book begins with an introduction of the fundamental properties of sound waves, and the perception of the characteristics of sound. The relation between intensity and loudness, and the relation between frequency and pitch are discussed. The basics of propagation of sound waves, and the interaction of sound waves with objects and structures of various sizes are introduced. Standing waves, harmonics and resonance are explained in simple terms, using graphics that provide a visual understanding.

This publication will introduce you to the basic principles and terminology of acoustics. You will learn about sound pressure levels, sound power levels, sound intensity levels, vibration levels, frequency, temporal variations, loudness, vibration transmissibility and vibration isolation. This course will give you definitions of fundamental acoustic properties. You will learn how they are calculated, utilized, and applied to a variety of noise and sound engineering situations you will encounter in your daily practice.

The Face Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT) 2006 and Iris Challenge Evaluation (ICE) 2006 are independent U.S. Government evaluations of face and iris recognition performance. These evaluations were conducted simultaneously at NIST using the same test infrastructure. Human performance verses algorithm performance was also evaluated, making this the first unified evaluation of face, iris and human recognition performance in the U.S. Government. Test results on large-scale experiments for both face and iris recognition are presented in this evaluation report. These results show two orders of magnitude improvement in performance on face recognition since the first face recognition evaluation program was established in 1993 and provide a performance baseline for iris recognition. Results on human performance verses machine performance and the first multi-modal comparison between face and iris recognition are also presented in this report.