Version 2.3.1 -- 2023-06-05 Ever been reading a paper and wanted to compare metabolic rates to your own results but they were in a different unit? New in this release is convert_MR(), a function for converting between different units of oxygen uptake or production rate. These can be absolute, mass-specific, or area-specific rates. See help("convert_MR") for examples. It also works on convert_rate or convert_rate.ft objects so you can change the output units of a respR analysis without having to re-run the whole thing. To help with this new functionality, this version has undergone a major update around unit handling. In case you didn't know, respR accepts different variations in unit formatting. E.g. "mg per h", "mg H", "mg hr-1", etc. are all recognised as mgO2/h. There's been a substantial internal update to unit recognition to use regex instead of a brute force approach. This system is more robust and accepts even more variations in style; units can be formed from abbreviated versions or words (e.g. mg or milligram), separated by a space, forward slash, dot, or underscore, are case-insensitive, and accept other variations (e.g km2, km -2, km^2, kmsq, etc). In addition a few new units of dissolved oxygen (DO) and metabolic rate are now accepted. See below. A couple of minor but handy changes: salinity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure are now saved to summary tables in convert_rate() and convert_rate.ft() outputs to help with keeping track of results from different experiments; and in inspect(), inspect.ft(), and oxy_crit() you can now specify columns by name as well as column number. Lastly, a major change is that import_file() has been deprecated. It is still fully functional, but will not be updated and will be removed in the next major release version (i.e. v3.0, although this is not planned for any time soon). This was only ever intended to be a convenience function for those completely new to R, and was always experimental as there is no way we could test against every variation of oxygen sensor system output files. However, we found some users were overly reliant on it and on encountering a problem with a file asking us to update the function rather than try to import it themselves. To our knowledge, every oxygen sensor system exports data in formats (e.g. .csv, .txt, .xlsx) which can be easily imported into R using generic functions such as read.csv. This is a basic skill anyone using R should be comfortable with, and also allows for much more control and the ability to troubleshoot issues. ==================================== New ======================================= NEW: convert_MR()- A new function for converting metabolic rates between different units of oxygen uptake or production. See examples in help("convert_MR") and here. NEW: convert_rate(), convert_rate.ft() - Salinity (S), temperature (t), and pressure (P) inputs are now saved as columns in the final $summary table. These can be entered even if they are not required for conversions to the output rate unit, which may help with keeping track of results across different experiments. NEW: inspect(), inspect.ft(), oxy_crit() - Column names can now be used to specify columns, not just column number. See example here. NEW: Raw data can now be in these units of dissolved oxygen (DO), and can be used for conversions in convert_DO or in convert_rate as the oxy.unit of the original data: ul/l, ul/kg, mm3/kg (equivalent to ul/kg), cm3/kg (equivalent to ml/kg), ppm (i.e. parts per million, equivalent to mg/kg). In addition, "cc" (abbreviation for cubic centimetres, as sometimes used in older publications) is recognised as cm3 (e.g. cc/L as DO, cc/h as a metabolic rate). NEW: The following units of oxygen amount can now be used in convert_rate or convert_rate.ft as part of the output unit, or in convert_MR to convert between units of oxygen uptake: mm3, cm3, ul. e.g. ul/h or cm3/day/kg, etc. NEW: Tested with R version 4.3.0 =================================== Changes ==================================== CHANGE: import_file() has been deprecated. It is still fully functional but will not be updated and will be removed in a future version. See above. CHANGE: Units are now parsed to a standardised format in outputs. For example, in convert_rate if you specify "MG per h" or "mg h-1" as the output unit this will appear as "mgO2/hr" in the output object; "ml min-1 kg-1" becomes "mLO2/min/kg", etc. This means you can be sure the unit is being recognised correctly even if your input is formed differently. CHANGE: unit_args() updated for new units. CHANGE: Errors and warnings have been revised to be more concise and informative, especially about what function they originate from.

Please cite respR in publications using the following journal article: