Search

Castiglione D'Adda is one of the municipalities more precociously and severely affected by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic in Lombardy. With our study we aimed to understand the diffusion of the infection by mass serological screening. We searched for SARS-CoV-2 IgGs in the entire population on a voluntary basis using lateral flow immunochromatographic tests (RICT) on capillary blood (rapid tests). We then performed chemioluminescent serological assays (CLIA) and naso-pharyngeal swabs (NPS) in a randomized representative sample and in each subject with a positive rapid test. Factors associated with RICT IgG positivity were assessed by uni- and multivariate logistic regression models. Out of the 4143 participants, 918 (22·2%) showed RICT IgG positivity. In multivariable analysis, IgG positivity increases with age, with a significant non-linear effect (p = 0·0404). We found 22 positive NPSs out of the 1330 performed. Albeit relevant, the IgG prevalence is lower than expected and suggests that a large part of the population remains susceptible to the infection. The observed differences in prevalence might reflect a different infection susceptibility by age group. A limited persistence of active infections could be found after several weeks after the epidemic peak in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hardware-software codesign is emerging as a global top-down solution to design of reactive embedded systems, starting from high level specifications and going — through hardware-software partitioning and cosynthesis — to link with lower level CAD and CASE tools. At the top level, requirements usually take into account cost and time bounds; we propose here to insert at the same level (i.e., before hardware-software partitioning) also testability requirements, so as to grant the possibility of checking correct interaction between the specified objects whatever their subsequent implementation. A formalism for definition of interfaces and protocols is presented; rules aimed at verification of the interface syntax are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]