Feline calicivirus (FCV) is a common pathogen of cats that is particularly widespread in multi-cat environments such as shelters and catteries. FCV infections are usually associated with acute, mild and self-limiting upper respiratory tract disease characterized by oral vesicles/ulcers. Recently, virulent systemic disease (VSD) associated with FCV infection has been reported in the USA and Europe. This paper describes a case of VSD affecting one adult, FIV infected cat ("Oscar") living in a shelter located in Northern Italy; the clinical, post-mortem and laboratory findings indicate that this is the first case of suspected FCV-VSD in this country. Similar to a previous report (Meyer et al., 2011), the disease affected only one cat, while others remained asymptomatic, despite their direct contact with "Oscar". Phylogenetic analysis identified unique features in the "Oscar" FCV isolate. The FIV infection of the patient might have favoured the generation of the virulent FCV strains in this cat.

Summary The activity of neurons of the medial posterior parietal area V6A in macaque monkeys is modulated by many aspects of reach task. In the past, research was mostly focused on modulating the effect of single parameters upon the activity of V6A cells. Here, we used Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) to simultaneously test the contribution of several factors upon V6A cells during a fix-to-reach task. This approach resulted in the definition of a representative “functional fingerprint” for each neuron. We first studied how the features are distributed in the population. Our analysis highlighted the virtual absence of units strictly selective for only one factor and revealed that most cells are characterized by “mixed selectivity.” Then, exploiting our GLM framework, we investigated the dynamics of spatial parameters encoded within V6A. We found that the tuning is not static, but changed along the trial, indicating the sequential occurrence of visuospatial transformations helpful to guide arm movement.

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To characterize parapoxviruses causing severe disease in wild ruminants in Stelvio Park, Italy, we sequenced and compared the DNA of several isolates. Results demonstrated that the red deer isolates are closely related to the parapox of red deer in New Zealand virus.