Assessment of Co-Occurring Depression and Substance Use in an Ethnically Diverse Patient Sample During Behavioral Health Intake Interviews

Background: Co-occurring disorders present a challenge for providers who often fail to diagnose them with accuracy. This study explores the assessment process of co-occurring depressive and substance use disorders in community health clinics serving ethnically diverse patients. The goals are to identify how symptoms discussed in intake, as well as patient and provider characteristics, are associated with receiving a diagnosis of co-occurring disorders or not. Methods: Participation in the study consisted of videotaping the intake, conducting a semi-structured interview, and completing demographic and clinical measures. Quantitative analyses were conducted based on information coded from videotapes of intakes with 119 patients who screened positive for symptoms of depressive disorders and substance use. A subset of cases (28) diagnosed with co-occurring disorders were qualitatively analyzed. Results: Results suggest that being female and any discussion of depression as a general term increased the likelihood of receiving a diagnosis of depression. Discussing symptoms of drug and alcohol use increased the likelihood of receiving a substance use disorder diagnosis, and discussing symptoms of substance use only increased the likelihood of receiving a dual diagnosis. Qualitative analyses indicate that providers report conducting more systematic assessments for substance use than depressive disorders, which is not supported by the quantitative findings. Conclusions: Our results point to discrepancies in the ways providers and patients describe the assessment of dual diagnoses. Factors such as the role of nonverbal information and patient presentation were identified as contributing to complexity of the assessment

Distributed Solar 2020 Data Update

Berkeley Lab’s Tracking the Sun report summarizes installed prices and other trends among grid-connected, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States. This report is now being published on a biannual cycle. In 2020, Berkeley Lab has released a more limited Distributed Solar 2020 Data Update, which consists of the same data otherwise published in Tracking the Sun report. The update includes data on more than 1.9 million systems installed through 2019, covering 82% of all distributed PV systems installed nationally through that timeframe. As in prior years, the data update focuses to a large degree on installed prices reported for distributed PV projects, describing both historical trends and variability in pricing across projects. -With respect to the historical price trajectory, national median installed prices fell, from 2018 to 2019, by roughly 1% for residential systems, remained essentially flat for small non-residential systems, and fell by 4% for large non-residential systems. Across all three customer segments, these are the slowest annual percentage declines since 2006-2008. -Pricing continues to vary widely across individual projects, reflecting, among other things, differences in system sizing and design, installer-level pricing strategies, and local market conditions. For example, among residential systems installed in 2019, the lowest 20% were priced below $3.1/W, while the highest 20$4.5/W. The distributions for non-residential systems exhibit similarly wide spreads. In addition to data on installed prices, the data update also covers a broad range of trends related to distributed PV system design, including: system sizing, module efficiency, module-level power electronics, inverter-loading ratios, solar+storage installations, mounting configuration, panel orientation, third-party ownership, and customer segmentation

Tracking the Sun: Pricing and Design Trends for Distributed Photovoltaic Systems in the United States, 2021 Edition

Berkeley Lab’s annual Tracking the Sun report describes trends among grid-connected, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States. The latest edition of the report focuses on systems installed through year-end 2020, and is based on data from roughly 2.2 million systems, covering 79% of all distributed PV systems installed nationally through 2020. The report describes trends related to: -Project characteristics, including system size, module efficiencies, prevalence of paired PV with storage, use of module-level power electronics, third-party ownership, mounting configurations, panel orientation, and non-residential customer segmentation ownership -Median installed-price trends, including both long-term and more recent temporal trends at the national and state levels, with comparisons to other recent PV cost and pricing benchmarks as well as to prices reported for other countries -Variability in pricing across individual projects based on system size, state, installer, module efficiency, inverter technology, and non-residential customer type The report also includes an econometric analysis to estimate the effects of individual drivers on installed prices for host-owned residential systems installed in 2020

Income Trends among U.S. Residential Rooftop Solar Adopters

Berkeley Lab tracks and analyzes solar-adopter demographic characteristics. A central element of this work is an annual report describing income trends of residential solar adopters over time and across geographies. The report is based on household-level income estimates for single-family residential solar adopters across the United States, and is intended to serve as a foundational reference document for policy-makers, industry stakeholders, and other researchers interested in demographic trends among residential solar adopters. The report is published with an accompanying interactive data visualization tool that allows users to further explore the underlying data. In addition to the annual report, Berkeley Lab also conducts targeted topical analyses on issues related to solar-adopter demographics and provides direct analytical support to organizations working to expand access to solar energy among low-to-moderate income households. Requests for analytical support may be submitted through this form: "https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfOauinm2NRF-9J39aDh3447F9FDTOsP3tpMHJLzH_orKoTpw/viewform" target="_blank">online form.&nbsp

Cultivation, cryopreservation and resuscitation of Theileria annulata transformed cells in serum-free media

Introduction: Tropical theileriosis is a protozoan disease caused by Theileria annulata that affects cattle in Northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia where vector ticks of the genus Hyalomma occur. Various measures are applied to control the disease, including vaccination with attenuated T. annulata schizonts. Cultivation of T. annulata schizonts is mainly conducted in media containing Fetal Bovine Serum (FBS), which has some disadvantages such as costs, batch- to-batch variation and ethical concerns. Methods: In this study, we conducted three experiments to evaluate the ability of (1) T. annulata strains grown in RPMI with 10% FBS (RPMI-FBS) to adapt and grow in serum-free media (i.e., HL-1, RPMI without FBS supplementation, ISF-1, and M199), (2) a T. annulata strain grown in ISF-1 and subsequently frozen in this medium to grow in ISF-1 again after long-term storage in liquid nitrogen, and (3) a T. annulata strain freshly isolated from infected bovine lymphocytes to growin ISF-1, also after cryopreservation. Cell numbers, schizont index, the viability and generation doubling time were calculated in all experiments. Results and discussion: In the first experiment, the Hessiene and Beja cell lines from Tunisia previously cultivated in RPMI-FBS and adapted to serum-free media continued to grow significantly better in RPMI-FBS compared to the serum-freemedia. In the second experiment, a Tunisian cell line (Hessiene) cryopreserved in ISF-1 with 5%[v/v] dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) grewbetter after thawing in RPMI-FBS compared to ISF-1 with a highly significant difference in cell growth (p < 0.001), whereas the third experiment showed that the Ankara cell line had similar growth characteristics in both RPMI-FBS and ISF-1 before and after thawing, with a shorter generation doubling time in ISF-1 than in RPMI-FBS (p = 0.23). Our findings suggest that freshly isolated cells can be propagated, frozen and thawed in serum-free media such as ISF-1, but once cells are adapted to cultivation in the presence of FBS or resuscitated from frozen storage, propagation in serum-free media may not perform as well as cultivation in RPMI-FBS

Dual RNA-seq to catalogue host and parasite gene expression changes associated with virulence of T. annulata-transformed bovine leukocytes: towards identification of attenuation biomarkers

The apicomplexan parasite Theileria annulata is transmitted by Hyalomma ticks and causes an acute lymphoproliferative disease that is invariably lethal in exotic cattle breeds. The unique ability of the schizont stage of T. annulata to transform infected leukocytes to a cancer-like phenotype and the simplicity of culturing and passaging T. annulata-transformed cells in vitro have been explored for live vaccine development by attenuating the transformed cells using lengthy serial propagation in vitro. The empirical in vivo evaluation of attenuation required for each batch of long-term cultured cells is a major constraint since it is resource intensive and raises ethical issues regarding animal welfare. As yet, the molecular mechanisms underlying attenuation are not well understood. Characteristic changes in gene expression brought about by attenuation are likely to aid in the identification of novel biomarkers for attenuation. We set out to undertake a comparative transcriptome analysis of attenuated (passage 296) and virulent (passage 26) bovine leukocytes infected with a Tunisian strain of T. annulata termed Beja. RNA-seq was used to analyse gene expression profiles and the relative expression levels of selected genes were verified by real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) analysis. Among the 3538 T. annulata genes analysed, 214 were significantly differentially expressed, of which 149 genes were up-regulated and 65 down-regulated. Functional annotation of differentially expressed T. annulata genes revealed four broad categories of metabolic pathways: carbon metabolism, oxidative phosphorylation, protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. It is interesting to note that of the top 40 genes that showed altered expression, 13 were predicted to contain a signal peptide and/or at least one transmembrane domain, suggesting possible involvement in host-parasite interaction. Of the 16,514 bovine transcripts, 284 and 277 showed up-regulated and down-regulated expression, respectively. These were assigned to functional categories relevant to cell surface, tissue morphogenesis and regulation of cell adhesion, regulation of leucocyte, lymphocyte and cell activation. The genetic alterations acquired during attenuation that we have catalogued herein, as well as the accompanying in silico functional characterization, do not only improve understanding of the attenuation process, but can also be exploited by studies aimed at identifying attenuation biomarkers across different cell lines focusing on some host and parasite genes that have been highlighted in this study, such as bovine genes (CD69, ZNF618, LPAR3, and APOL3) and parasite genes such as TA03875

In vitro infection of bovine erythrocytes with Theileria annulata merozoites as a key step in completing the T. annulata life cycle in vitro

Theileria annulata is a protozoan parasite with a complex life cycle involving a bovine host and a tick vector. It is transmitted by Hyalomma ticks and is the causative agent of tropical theileriosis, a debilitating and often fatal disease in southern Europe, northern Africa and large parts of Asia. Understanding the biology of different life cycle stages is critical for the control of tropical theileriosis and requires the use of experimental animals which poses an ethical concern. We present for the first time the in vitro infection of red blood cells (RBCs) with T. annulata differentiated schizonts. The Ankara cell line of T. annulata was cultured at 41 °C for nine days to induce merogony and subsequently incubated with purified RBCs for one to three days. Percentage of parasitized erythrocyte (PPE) over the short culture period was estimated by Giemsa staining (0.007–0.01%), Flow cytometry activated sorting (FACS) (0.02–1.1%) and observation of FACS sorted cells by confocal microscopy (0.05–0.4%). There was a significant difference in the PPE between FACS and the two other techniques (one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey test, P = 0.004) but no significant difference was observed between the confocal imaging and Giemsa staining methods (ANOVA one-way followed by Tukey test, P = 0.06). Importantly, all three complementary methods confirmed the invasion of RBCs by T. annulata merozoites in vitro. Although the experimental conditions will require further optimization to increase the PPE, the in vitro infection of RBCs by T. annulata merozoites is pivotal in paving the way for the eventual completion of the T. annulata life cycle in vitro when combined with artificial tick feeding

Sequence polymorphisms in a Theileria annulata surface protein (TaSP) known to augment the immunity induced by live attenuated cell line vaccine

Theileria annulata is a tick‐borne protozoan causing tropical theileriosis in cattle. The use of attenuated cell line vaccines in combination with subunit vaccines has been relatively successful as a control method, as exemplified by a recent study in which immunization with a local cell line followed by booster vaccinations with recombinant T. annulata surface protein (TaSP) resulted in 100% protection upon field challenge in Sudan. However, these findings cannot be directly extrapolated to other countries as culture‐attenuated live vaccines are generated using local strains and no systematic evaluation of genotype differences between countries has been undertaken. In this study, we sequenced the TaSP gene from T. annulata cell lines and field isolates from Tunisia (n = 28) and compared them to genotypes from Sudan (n = 25) and Morocco (n = 1; AJ316259.1). Our analyses revealed 20 unique TaSP genotypes in the Tunisian samples, which were all novel but similar to genotypes found in Asia. The impact of these polymorphisms on the ability of the TaSP antigen to boost the immunity engendered by live cell line vaccines, especially in Tunisia where studies with TaSP have not been conducted, remains to be examined. Interestingly, phylogenetic analyses of publicly available TaSP sequences resolved the sequences into two clusters with no correlation to the geographical origin of the isolates. The availability of candidate vaccines that were recently attenuated using local strains from Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco should be exploited to generate a comprehensive catalogue of genetic variation across this regional collection of attenuated live vaccines