[Babase] Fwd: On Karl's Cycles et al documentation for review
Susan Alberts
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Mon, 7 Feb 2005 16:01:39 -0500
Thanks for this, I have forwarded this to the babase list because it
seems the right place for it but please correct me if there is some
reason to keep it in regular email. It is a bit easier for me to keep
track of babase related things if they are sent to babase list but I
do recognize that there might be exceptions.
Susan
>
>
>Susan,
>Let us know if you have any input regarding Karl's document,
>see Catherine's notes below if you do go through it,
>j
>
>>Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 11:39:40 -0500
>>From: Catherine Markham <amarkham@Princeton.EDU>
>>Subject: On Karl's Cycles et al documentation for review
>>To: Jeanne Altmann <altj@Princeton.EDU>
>>Organization: Princeton University
>>X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
>>User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3)
>> Gecko/20040910
>>Original-recipient: rfc822;altj@phoenix.princeton.edu
>>
>>Hi Jeanne,
>>
>>Karl and I just finished talking about the revised cycles
>>documentation he sent out over the weekend, and I have a couple
>>remaining questions that he said would maybe be best answered by
>>you.
>>
>>When reading through everything this morning, the following sent up
>>red flags:
>>
>>Pregs Table
>>
>>1. Pid: The documentation describing Pid states that "when the
>>mother is not known, the Pid is the Sname of the individual that
>>the pregnancy produced." Are there truly cases where a pregnancy
>>could be observed but the mother would not be identified? This
>>just seemed odd to me.
>>
>>2. Parity: Karl is specific in that parity refers to the true
>>order of pregnancies, though the order can begin with 1 (female's
>>first pregnancy) or 101 (the first observed pregnancy for a
>>female). The distinction between 1 and 101 makes sense and I like
>>that, but I'm hesitant to think of parity as the "cardinality" of
>>pregnancies. What if, for example, we observe a female's first
>>three pregnancies after she reached maturity (parity 1, 2, and 3)
>>but then lost observations on that group for a period of time.
>>When we pick up observations again, will the parity number resume
>>at 4? If so, should we still look at this field as true order of
>>pregnancies or is it more like sequence in the cycles table?
>>
>>3. Conceive: The text currently states that a resume is "the
>>first cycle following a pregnancy" and that "the associated Cycles
>>record will usually not have a resumption of menses date." I
>>couldn't think of any resumption conditions where it would be
>>logical to have an mdate for the resume cycle. I know there are
>>some in the system (Laurence pointed out these out to me), but in
>>these cases the pregnancy was aborted and the "mdate" was listed as
>>the abortion date.
>>
>>
>>Seeds Table
>>
>>1. State: I understand and agree with Karl's notes here, but just
>>question the codes he chose to distinguish between luteal and
>>lactating phase. I would keep the codes consistent between the
>>Seeds, Repstats, and Cycstats tables for all phases that occur in
>>more than one table (having "L" code for luteal in the Seeds table
>>but code for lactating in the Repstats table seems confusing to
>>me). Karl mentioned this was something I should check on with you.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Catherine
>>
>>--
>>Catherine Markham
>>Department Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
>>Princeton University
>>Phone: (609) 258-6898
>>Fax: (609) 258-2712
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Alberts, Associate Professor
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708
phone 919-660-7272 fax 919-660-7293