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The early Slavs in Byzantine Sources of the 6th Century.The Problems of the First Reports Regarding the Early Slavs, the paper tackles the testimonies of three Byzantine authors of the 6th century, Jordanes, Procopius and Pseudo-Caesarius, focusing on their credibility and the problems they arised from their examination. The critical approach of Jordanes’ testimonies, leaves no room for the historical connection of the Venethi (known from Plinius the Elder, Tacitus and Ptolemaios) with the Early Slavs (Sclaveni and Antes). Such a connection is rejected, taking into account, apart from Jordanes’ purposes, the plausible placement of the Venethi close to Vistula River and the ethnogenesis of the Slavs in Eastern Europe. On Procopius’ ethnographic account, the impression given is that it seems ‘‘isolated’’ from the rest of the Wars, it is more a kind of ‘‘general guide for the northern barbarians’’ than a pure excursus for the Slavs, with information often contradicting other fragments of the Wars. In Procopius’ description we can also distinguish elements of oral tradition. Although we could not attribute to Procopius an intentional misrepresentation of the reality, we draw the conclusion that, despite having direct contact with the early Slavs, he followed the literary tradition with many common places in order to present another northern barbarian, mixing information about the nomads and the Germanic peoples. In our opinion, Procopius’ account does not offer a credible image on the Early Slavs and should be used with reservations. Considering the credibility of Pseudo-Caesarius, namely his testimony on some primitive rituals of the Slavs we note that Pseudo-Caesarius discerned to Sclaveni another Scythian nation and in our view his testimony neither consists a description of original Slavic customs nor offers any particular – and additional – information for the Early Slavs. On the other hand, the identification of the name Physonitai/Danubians with the Antes, as some scholars suggested, is rejected in favour of a hypothesis for the native Christian populations on the southern bank of the Lower Danube.

Maintaining the function of the systems and recovering from shocks or chronic stresses is what, nowadays, refers to Urban Resilience. Resilience is a term derived from the Latin verb resilire, which means bounce. It was used as a synonym of resistance in different contexts such as medical, psychological, among others. However, since the 1980s, the concept of resilience was mostly associated with the ecological field and referred to as the capability of dealing with catastrophes (Fooken 2016: 13ff; Voss & Dittmer 2016: 179ff; Wink 2016: 1ff). Currently, it is a topic frequently discussed worldwide due to the Anthropocene, which is aggravating climate change at an accelerated pace. In this context, the term is used to emphasize the constant symbiosis between humans and nature (Prominski 2014: 6ff). The approach of this paper tackles flood risks in a specific neighborhood in the city of Hannover. For that matter, historic events and actions implemented by the municipality, as well as the study of data provided, will be mentioned in this document. After going through a research and discussion phase, the intention is to develop guidelines and propose design strategies to address flood threats at the study case site.

This white paper presents a proof of concept implementation of digital baseband radio data transport over Optical Transport Network (OTN) compliant to 3GPP Long Term Evolution – Advanced (LTE-A) standard enabling Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) architecture. The transport between the baseband module and a remote radio module is compliant to Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) and to the OBSAI reference point 3 - 01 (RP3-01) interface protocols, respectively. The purpose is to demonstrate that data integrity and clocking performance at the radio node still meets the strict standard requirements after CPRI and OBSAI transport over an OTN.

Distributed base station architectures represent the new trend that operators follow in order to resolve cost, performance and efficiency challenges when deploying 4G networks. Main components of such architectures are multimode radios capable of operating according to GSM, HSPA, WiMAX and LTE standards, known as remote radio heads (RRH). The key feature of remote radio heads is the extended software configurability which enables the deployment of more flexible and energy-efficient radio solutions. This paper describes a modern multi-mode radio system reference architecture and the major digital building blocks that when combined together enable multi-mode and more power efficient operation. It concentrates on blocks which can efficiently run multi-rate digital signal processing and blocks that increase radio power efficiency by linearizing the power amplifier output stage. The importance of a digital predistortion (DPD) block is emphasized and an adaptive polynomial approach based on cartesian to polar conversion is then proposed. Such radio architecture has successfully been implemented on a low-cost FPGA family meeting the WiMAX/LTE spectrum and Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) requirements.

Περίληψη: Η επεξεργασία, η διαχείριση και η μετέπειτα διάθεση των επεξεργασμένων απορριμμάτων έχει γίνει μια αναγκαιότητα στη σύγχρονη εποχή. Η αυξανόμενη παραγωγή οικιακών απορριμμάτων στον αναπτυγμένο κόσμο με την παράλληλη αύξηση ενεργειακής ζήτησης καθώς και οι αυξομειώσεις της τιμής του πετρελαίου μας αναγκάζει να στραφούμε σε εναλλακτικές πηγές παραγωγής ενέργειας που συνάμα θα μειώνουν και τον όγκο των απορριμμάτων. Η ευαισθητοποίηση της κοινής γνώμης στα περιβαλλοντικά θέματα και η πλέον γνώση του μεγέθους της καταστροφής που έχει προκαλέσει η ανθρώπινη δραστηριότητα έχουν κάνει την κοινωνία πιο δεκτική (ακόμα και την ελληνική) σε λύσεις διαχείρισης απορριμμάτων που στο παρελθόν θα ήταν εκτός λογικής της και άμεσα απορριπτέες. Η θερμική επεξεργασία ήταν για χρόνια ταμπού για την ελληνική κοινωνία. Η παραπληροφόρηση και η άγνοια έκανε τον κόσμο ιδιαιτέρως αρνητικό μπροστά σ’ αυτή τη μορφή επεξεργασίας που λύνει ταυτόχρονα δύο από τα προβλήματά του: την συσσώρευση των απορριμμάτων και το ενεργειακό. Με την οικονομική κρίση να μαστίζει ακόμα (και θα συνεχίσει για χρόνια) την Ελλάδα είναι καιρός να προταθούν λύσεις καινοτόμες (για την χώρα μας) και να ξεφύγουμε από παρελθοντικές αντιλήψεις. Η παρούσα διπλωματική στοχεύει στο να εξερευνήσει τις οικονομικές όσο και περιβαλλοντικές δυνατότητες του Ν. Αρκαδίας ως προς την αποτέφρωση απορριμμάτων με παράλληλη παραγωγή ηλεκτρικής και θερμικής ενέργειας. Μέχρι στιγμής ο κύριος τρόπος διαχείρισης των απορριμμάτων στην περιοχή είναι η εναπόθεσή τους σε χωματερές. Περιβαλλοντικά αυτή είναι η χειρότερη επιλογή και παρά το γεγονός ότι υπάρχει σχεδιασμός για αλλαγή στον τρόπο αντιμετώπισης αυτός υλοποιείται είτε με πολύ αργούς ρυθμούς ή και καθόλου. Ένα ακόμα σημαντικό στοιχείο είναι η εξάρτηση της Ελλάδας από τα ορυκτά καύσιμα που έρχεται σε αντίθεση με την Ευρωπαϊκή προοπτική για μείωση μέσα στην επόμενη πενταετία. Τα αποτελέσματα της παρούσας διπλωματικής δείχνουν ότι η κατασκευή ενός εργοστασίου ΣΗΘΥΑ είναι οικονομικά και περιβαλλοντικά εφικτή. Η μονάδα σχεδιάστηκε για να διαχειρίζεται 61.000 t ΑΣΑ ετησίως και θα έχει, ανάλογα και με τη σύσταση των ΑΣΑ την δυνατότητα να παράγει 55 GWh ηλεκτρικής και 119 GWh θερμικής ενέργειας και να αποφέρει κέρδη της τάξης των 9,6 εκατομμυρίων ευρώ ετησίως. Summarization: Process, management and the later on disposal of the treated waste have become a necessity in modern day life. The continuous growth in waste production in the developed world alongside with the rise in energy demand and the fluctuations of crude oil prices has forced us to turn to alternative power sources that will decrease the waste volume. Public awareness in environmental issues and the now knowledge of the level of the environmental destruction that the human activities have caused, made society receptive (even Greek one) to waste management solutions that in the past would have been out of reason and immediately rejected. Thermal waste treatment was a taboo issue for Greek society. Misinformation and ignorance made public extremely negative in this form of treatment that solves in the same time two of the problems that this society faces, waste accumulation and energy shortage. With the economic crisis raging it is time to propound innovative solutions (for the country) and to break away from outmoded ideas. This thesis aims to explore if the economic and environmental capabilities of Arcadia County meet the criteria for the operation of a waste to energy plant. Deposition in unmonitored landfills is the main way that the wastes are treated in the region. Environmentally this is the worst-case scenario. There are plans for this to change but the implementation is either slow or not excising at all. Key information is the dependence of Greece in fossil fuels, which contradicts the European perspective for decreasing the fossil fuel use in the next five years. The results of this thesis show that the operation of a waste to energy plant in Arcadia County is economically and environmentally feasible. The unit was designed to treat 61.000 tons of household waste annually and able to produce (depending on the waste composition) 55 GWh of electrical energy and 119 GWh of thermal energy. Annual revenues are somewhere between 9 and 10 million Euros.

International audience; The Byzantine materiality, how it can be defined and did it exist beyond Byzantium? Evidently it can not be regarded as a simple continuity of Byzantine material culture abroad. However, it does not mean that in the modern "search of lost Byzantium" at the periphery of the Oikouménē researchers have no chances to find any traces of material elements of Byzantine civilization. In this "peripheral search" they could happen on texts and artifacts of Byzantine origin which did not preserve in the cultural space of the Empire. In recent years in various branches of Humanities a spectacular phenomenon was attested: medieval Eastern Europe of the 9th-15th centuries kept the synchronous cultural product of Byzantium under different material forms in amazing completeness .