Niklas Luhmann is one of the best, and least understood, social theorists of the last century. One of the main disadvantages of the poor reception of his work has been the lack of fruitful critical dialogues with other theoretical perspectives. This book brings, for the first time, Luhmann's work into critical dialogue with other theoretical positions, including the works of Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, as well as gender studies, eco-theories, bioethics, translation, ANT and complexity theory. The book goes beyond theory: expanding its cognitive horizons and revealing the truly topical contemporary potential of Luhmann's work.

This book, for the first time, brings Niklas Luhmann's work into dialogue with other theoretical positions, including Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze, gender studies, bioethics, translation, ANT, eco-theories and complexity theory.

This book gives an introduction to the discrete wavelet transform and some of its applications. It is based on a novel approach to discrete wavelets called lifting. The first part is a completely elementary introduction to the subject, and the prerequisites for this part are knowledge of basic calculus and linear algebra. The second part requires some knowledge of Fourier series and digital signal analysis. The connections between lifting and filter theory are presented and the wavelet packet transforms are defined. The time-frequency plane is used for interpretation of signals. The problems with finite length signals are treated in detail. MATLAB is used as the computational environment for examples and implementation of transforms. The book is well suited for undergraduate mathematics and electrical engineering students and engineers in industry.