Urinary tract infections in women: etiology and treatment options

Urinary tract infections (UTI) are common among the female population. It has been calculated that about one-third of adult women have experienced an episode of symptomatic cystitis at least once. It is also common for these episodes to recur. If predisposing factors are not identified and removed, UTI can lead to more serious consequences, in particular kidney damage and renal failure. The aim of this review was to analyze the factors more commonly correlated with UTI in women, and to see what possible solutions are currently used in general practice and specialized areas, as well as those still under investigation. A good understanding of the possible pathogenic factors contributing to the development of UTI and its recurrence will help the general practitioner to interview the patient, search for causes that would otherwise remain undiscovered, and to identify the correct therapeutic strategy

Underwater geophysical prospection in ancient Olous, Crete

We employ electrical resistivity tomography and magnetic gradiometry methods to the ultra-shallow submerged and littoral archaeological site of Olous. This allows reconstruction of the built environment that nowadays lie below the sea bottom, thus completing the respective archaeological evidence

POTATOES, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND OTHER AMENITIES: PLAYING WITH COLORS ON PANCHROMATIC AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Historical photographs, whether taken from the air or from the ground, are usually synonyms of grayscale or sepia prints. From the very beginning of photography, during the first half of 19th century, people were amazed by this new media that could record all aspects of a scene with great detail. Soon though, everybody started wondering why would such an impressive innovation fail to record colors? A process of trials and errors then started (including the most successful and pioneer one, involving the use of potato starch, by Lumière brothers) aiming to add colors to photographs, till the consolidation of new systems (camera and film) capable to collect photographs directly in color. In the past, before and during this innovative approach, native black and white photographs were painted in the effort to give them life. Today, only few methods are available to convert a panchromatic image into a color one, and they need a number of steps and further development to work properly. The paper tries to present different methods to colorize native black and white photographs, based on available automatic or interactive Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning or Deep Learning) algorithms, on revised remote sensing procedures and on visual tricks, aiming at exploring the possible improvement in readability and interpretation of photographed contests in the usual analytic process of photo-interpretation. At the same time, colorized historical photographs hold different appeal in the general public and have the potential to attract and involve non-experts in the archaeological/historical reconstruction phases

GEOREFERENZIAZIONE ACCURATA, VELOCE E GRATUITA

<p>La georeferenziazione di una immagine satellitare o di una fotografia aerea rispetto a un sistema di coordinate di riferimento risulta un processo spesso indispensabile per la comprensione del palinsesto archeologico. Al tempo stesso essa richiede tempi lunghi (a volte ore) e grande accuratezza. Un aiuto perridurre i tempi di individuazione e selezione di corrispondenze fra immagini da georeferenziare e sistema di destinazione, aumentando la precisione a livello sub-pixel, viene oggi offerto da un nuovo set di strumenti gratuiti: AutoGR-Toolkit.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Geo-reference of Images with AutoGR-Toolkit </strong></p><p>AutoGR-Toolkit is a set of Pythonscripts converted to “.EXE” files with py2exe v0.6.9. The purpose of thetoolkit is to facilitate and speedup the process of geo-referencing images withfree and open source tools and graphical user-friendly interfaces. It embeds 4scripts (GGRAB, AuttoGR-Sift, GeoRef Filtering, GeoTiff Converter) and 2 algorithmlibraries (ASift and GDAL) to assist the user in geo-referencing oneimage on another according to the specifi c geographical projection. The use ofthe software does not require any special skill and allows the user to go frominput to output in few minutes, still keeping the possibility to customize almost every parameter to improve the fi nal accuracy. This paper describes the basic principles and functionalities behind every tool in the Toolkit. AutoGR-Toolkit is freely available at the URL http://www.ims.forth.gr/AutoGR.</p&gt

Il potenziale informativo degli archivi di fotografia militare della Seconda Guerra Mondiale ai fini della protezione civile e dell’analisi del territorio Fotogrammetria, intelligenza artificiale e webGIS al servizio degli archivi fotografici

WWII aerial photo reconnaissance played a decisive role in the success of the Allied campaigns in Europe. Repeated aerial surveys provided information to monitor enemy lines, identify targets, plan attacks and assess damages inflicted by aerial bombing. Reconnaissance activity in the 1943-45 Italian campaign produced an awesome number of aerials, 883,005 of whom are kept today by ICCD-Aerofototeca Nazionale (AFN) in Rome. The often massive scale of bombing has left a lasting legacy across the landscape, as is shown by the problems in dealing with unexploded ordnance (UXO), still retrieved on a nearly daily basis. The AFN collection is a powerful, though still underdeveloped record of the landscape of wartime Italy and is essential for the plotting of UXO hazard maps. The article focuses on the main steps to be taken in order to exploit and share it

Shallow Off-Shore Archaeological Prospection with 3-D Electrical Resistivity Tomography: The Case of Olous (Modern Elounda), Greece

It is well known that nowadays as well as in the past the vast majority of human habitation and activities are mainly concentrated in littoral areas. Thus the increased attention to coastal zone management contributed to the development and implementation of shallow-water mapping approaches for capturing current environmental conditions. During the last decade, geophysical imaging techniques like electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) have been used in mapping onshore buried antiquities in a non-destructive manner, contributing to cultural heritage management. Despite its increased implementation in mapping on-shore buried archaeological remains, ERT has minimal to non-existent employment for the understanding of the past dynamics in littoral and shallow off-shore marine environments. This work presents the results of an extensive ERT survey in investigating part of the Hellenistic to Byzantine submerged archaeological site of Olous, located on the north-eastern coast of Crete, Greece. A marine area of 7100 m2 was covered with 178 densely spaced ERT lines having a cumulative length of 8.3 km. A combination of submerged static and moving survey modes were used to document potential buried and submerged structures. The acquired data from the marine environment were processed with two-dimensional and three-dimensional inversion algorithms. A real time kinematic global navigation satellite system was used to map the visible submerged walls and compile the bathymetry model of the bay. The adaptation of ERT in reconstructing the underwater archaeological remains in a shallow marine environment presented specific methodological and processing challenges. The in situ experience from the archaeological site of Olous showed that ERT provided a robust method for mapping the submerged archaeological structures related to the ancient built environment (walls, buildings, roads), signifying at the same time the vertical stratigraphy of the submerged sediments. The inherent limitation of employing ERT in a conductive environment is counterbalanced by the incorporation of precise knowledge for the conductivity and bathymetry of the saline water in the modelling and inversion procedure. Although the methodology definitely needs further refinement, the overall outcomes of this work underline the potential of ERT imaging being integrated into wider shallow marine projects for the mapping of archaeological sites in similar environmental regimes

Geophysical prospection in the territory of the Roman town of Aesernia, Central-Southern Italy

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Geophysical prospection in the territory of the Roman town of Aesernia, Central-Southern Italy

The geophysical prospection survey at Isernia constitutes a ground-based remote-sensing research module of the Aesernia field survey project (Stek et al. in press). This is a subproject of the “Landscapes of Early Roman Colonization project”, funded by NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) and based at Leiden University and the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, which is implemented in Molise in collaboration with the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Molise (Stek and Pelgrom 2013). The project investigates the rural settlement organization of the Roman towns of Venusia and Aesernia through conventional surface survey techniques and remote-sensing approaches (aerial imagery and geophysical prospection). Five different sites in the area of Isernia were prospected using an integrated strategy, namely magnetometry, soil resistance and ground penetrating (GPR) techniques. More than 16,820 m2 were prospected with a large degree of overlap between different methods

Exposing the Urban Plan of the ancient city of Hyettos, Boeotia, Greece

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