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BackgroundHuman fertility has always been a topic of curiosity and devotion. Many cultures consider fertility to be a necessity for the survival and perpetuation of mankind and since early times, myths were created to explain this fabulous process. Fertility gods were ubiquitous in numerous ancient human cultures and were used both to understand fertility and to cope with infertility by means of rituals and offerings.ObjectivesThis manuscript aims to catalog and describe the deities associated with male fertility and virility.Material and methodsWe conducted a comprehensive search for the terms “male fertility god” and “male virility god” on the internet using web‐based search engines. Based on the information retrieved, we selected those deities directed related to male fertility and/or virility and further deepened the search using Pubmed and Medline databases for peer‐reviewed articles as well as books and articles about ancient mythology.ResultsWe identified several gods linked to male fertility and virility in various cultures from Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, Southwestern United States, France, Colombia and Buthan..DiscussionMost of these deities were depicted with an erect phallus and with other fertility symbols like snakes. Some deities were also associated with plants and/or animal fertility and their festivals were often held during the harvest period.ConclusionGods of male fertility and virility played important roles in many ancient cultures. Offerings and rituals to these gods were the only available options to deal with problems of reproduction and demonstrate the lengths to which ancient people would go seeking cures for infertility.

Aims: The most prevalent urological malignancies are prostate cancer (PC), bladder cancer (BC) and renal cancer (RC). The diagnosis of each of these diseases is conducted, in most cases, invasively and each procedure may lead to complications. The method of metabonomic spectrometry by nuclear magnetic resonance of hydrogen (1H NMR) provides pathways of diagnostic information that can identify pathologies without invasive procedures. The possibility of using this method for the diagnosis of those cancers by a single sample of urine has not been described yet.

Low Resolution Thermal Array Sensors are widely used in several applications in indoor environments. In particular, one of these cheap, small and unobtrusive sensors provides a low-resolution thermal image of the environment and, unlike cameras; it is capable to detect human heat emission even in dark rooms. The obtained thermal data can be used to monitor older seniors while they are performing daily activities at home, to detect critical situations such as falls. Most of the studies in activity recognition using Thermal Array Sensors require human detection techniques to recognize humans passing in the sensor field of view. This paper aims to improve the accuracy of the algorithms used so far by considering the temperature environment variation. This method leverages an adaptive background estimation and a noise removal technique based on Kalman Filter. In order to properly validate the system, a novel installation of a single sensor has been implemented in a smart environment: the obtained results show an improvement in human detection accuracy with respect to the state of the art, especially in case of disturbed environments.

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