Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
Thanks Jonathan, I was indeed responsible for introducing 'green dogs' to discussions in CF, but since then my experience has expanded further into biological data and, in particular, into the world of contaminants in biota through EMODNET and our work in BODC with the Sea Mammal Research Unit. This has shown what you say about invalid combination possibilities for taxa being much less of an issue to be exactly right. It has also shown me that protection against 'green dogs' can in some circumstances become an unaffordable luxury. There are couple of points in your message where I would do things slightly differently. First, I would prefer 'number_concentration_of_taxon_in_sea_water' to 'number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water', because not all biological data are identified to the species level. Often the counts are at the level of genus, class or even phylum. Secondly, I think that CF setting up a controlled vocabulary for taxa is an unnecessary duplication that will cause us a lot of unnecessary work and take us out of our domain expertise comfort zone. In the marine domain, there is an almost universally accepted taxonomic controlled vocabulary with lashings of accompanying metadata that is extremely well governed by internationally recognised experts in the field with high quality technical governance in the form of tools, including a web service API. This is the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). I fully appreciate that CF covers more than the marine domain, but there is an alternative governance in the form of the International Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) , which is aimed more at terrestrial life than marine. If we say that names used in CF should be registered in at least one of these then we should be OK. As you will see in a message that has just been released, I'm proposing taking this forward through a Trac ticket. Cheers, Roy. From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gregory [j.m.greg...@reading.ac.uk] Sent: 25 March 2013 09:00 To: cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow a single data variable to contain data for several species, by having a dimension of size greater than one. Cheers Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
Dear Roy I think it would be fine and preferable to use someone else's controlled vocabulary so long as it has an appropriate format and content and/or we can define rules for using it in CF. Best wishes Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
Hi all - Species taxonomies are not like chemical vocabularies, in that terms for organisms change over time. There are some big projects involved in maintaining these taxonomies, and we probably don't want to commit to launching a parallel effort. The ubio project has a decent description of the problem, at http://www.ubio.org/index.php?pagename=background_intro So, it seems to me that if we're going to expand CF to accommodate biological data, we should follow Roy's advice, and have a 'generic' standard name that means 'organism count' and add at least one required attribute pointing to a taxonomic name server (with a version date). The 'current' species name could be included in the long_name attribute. Although it's a valid point that existing search tools don't know about extra attributes, the effort of keeping up with the changes in terms could render CF useless for this kind of data otherwise. Regards - Nan On 3/25/13 5:00 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote: Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow a single data variable to contain data for several species, by having a dimension of size greater than one. Cheers Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata -- *** * Nan GalbraithInformation Systems Specialist * * Upper Ocean Processes GroupMail Stop 29 * * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution* * Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 * *** ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
I will encourage you to check bio terms in Darwin Core http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm. and http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/dmac/biology/welcome.html. Hassan *Hassan Moustahfid, PhD. Biology/Ecosystem Observing Lead *NOAA/ U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office Operations Division 1100 Wayne Avenue – Suite 1225 Silver Spring, MD 20910 Tel: 301-427-2447 Email: hassan.moustah...@noaa.gov http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/ *Imagination is more important than knowledge. knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -Albert Einstein* On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Lowry, Roy K. r...@bodc.ac.uk wrote: Thanks Jonathan, I was indeed responsible for introducing 'green dogs' to discussions in CF, but since then my experience has expanded further into biological data and, in particular, into the world of contaminants in biota through EMODNET and our work in BODC with the Sea Mammal Research Unit. This has shown what you say about invalid combination possibilities for taxa being much less of an issue to be exactly right. It has also shown me that protection against 'green dogs' can in some circumstances become an unaffordable luxury. There are couple of points in your message where I would do things slightly differently. First, I would prefer 'number_concentration_of_taxon_in_sea_water' to 'number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water', because not all biological data are identified to the species level. Often the counts are at the level of genus, class or even phylum. Secondly, I think that CF setting up a controlled vocabulary for taxa is an unnecessary duplication that will cause us a lot of unnecessary work and take us out of our domain expertise comfort zone. In the marine domain, there is an almost universally accepted taxonomic controlled vocabulary with lashings of accompanying metadata that is extremely well governed by internationally recognised experts in the field with high quality technical governance in the form of tools, including a web service API. This is the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS). I fully appreciate that CF covers more than the marine domain, but there is an alternative governance in the form of the International Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) , which is aimed more at terrestrial life than marine. If we say that names used in CF should be registered in at least one of these then we should be OK. As you will see in a message that has just been released, I'm proposing taking this forward through a Trac ticket. Cheers, Roy. From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gregory [j.m.greg...@reading.ac.uk] Sent: 25 March 2013 09:00 To: cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
+1 Nan, great summary CF should prepare for the day when it needs to interoperate with multiple authorities, e.g., 2 different species vocabularies. It will not be possible for one vocabulary to serve all the scientific needs. We are on the right track here, let's see if we can solve the whole issue by ensuring that the species name reference either be a unique identifier, or be convertible, using automated means, to a unique identifier. John On Mar 25, 2013, at 11:18, Nan Galbraith ngalbra...@whoi.edu wrote: Hi all - Species taxonomies are not like chemical vocabularies, in that terms for organisms change over time. There are some big projects involved in maintaining these taxonomies, and we probably don't want to commit to launching a parallel effort. The ubio project has a decent description of the problem, at http://www.ubio.org/index.php?pagename=background_intro So, it seems to me that if we're going to expand CF to accommodate biological data, we should follow Roy's advice, and have a 'generic' standard name that means 'organism count' and add at least one required attribute pointing to a taxonomic name server (with a version date). The 'current' species name could be included in the long_name attribute. Although it's a valid point that existing search tools don't know about extra attributes, the effort of keeping up with the changes in terms could render CF useless for this kind of data otherwise. Regards - Nan On 3/25/13 5:00 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote: Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow a single data variable to contain data for several species, by having a dimension of size greater than one. Cheers Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata -- *** * Nan GalbraithInformation Systems Specialist * * Upper Ocean Processes GroupMail Stop 29 * * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution* * Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 * *** ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata --- John Graybeal Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org grayb...@marinemetadata.org ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
Hi. This sounds like a good plan. I think there should be an attribute with a specific name to carry the taxonomic details. It probably will occur in the long name as well, but I don't like the idea of making the long name the official repository for that information. It's not my arena, so I can't say with authority, but couldn't we come up with a new attribute that was named and described generically enough that it could handle species taxonomy info as well as chemical species info or whatever else may come up along these lines. Grace and peace, Jim Jim Biard Research Scholar Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites Remote Sensing and Applications Division National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801-5001 jim.bi...@noaa.gov 828-271-4900 On Mar 25, 2013, at 2:18 PM, Nan Galbraith ngalbra...@whoi.edu wrote: Hi all - Species taxonomies are not like chemical vocabularies, in that terms for organisms change over time. There are some big projects involved in maintaining these taxonomies, and we probably don't want to commit to launching a parallel effort. The ubio project has a decent description of the problem, at http://www.ubio.org/index.php?pagename=background_intro So, it seems to me that if we're going to expand CF to accommodate biological data, we should follow Roy's advice, and have a 'generic' standard name that means 'organism count' and add at least one required attribute pointing to a taxonomic name server (with a version date). The 'current' species name could be included in the long_name attribute. Although it's a valid point that existing search tools don't know about extra attributes, the effort of keeping up with the changes in terms could render CF useless for this kind of data otherwise. Regards - Nan On 3/25/13 5:00 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote: Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow a single data variable to contain data for several species, by having a dimension of size greater than one. Cheers Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata -- *** * Nan GalbraithInformation Systems Specialist * * Upper Ocean Processes GroupMail Stop 29 * * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution* * Woods Hole, MA 02543 (508) 289-2444 * *** ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and?Clostridium perfringens
Hi folks. I don't know if you received what I sent early about IOOS Biological Data services termnilogy and Darwin Core standards. If you want to create your own vocab go ahead. we will keep talking to our self. I think there is now an opportunity to figure out how to talk between CF and Darwin Core. FYI- Darwin Core is the standard used by Biodiversity community, GBIF http://www.gbif.org/ and by IOOS Biological group. Thanks Hassan *Hassan Moustahfid, PhD. Biology/Ecosystem Observing Lead *NOAA/ U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office Operations Division 1100 Wayne Avenue – Suite 1225 Silver Spring, MD 20910 Tel: 301-427-2447 Email: hassan.moustah...@noaa.gov http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/ *Imagination is more important than knowledge. knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. -Albert Einstein* On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 2:38 PM, John Graybeal grayb...@marinemetadata.orgwrote: +1 Nan, great summary CF should prepare for the day when it needs to interoperate with multiple authorities, e.g., 2 different species vocabularies. It will not be possible for one vocabulary to serve all the scientific needs. We are on the right track here, let's see if we can solve the whole issue by ensuring that the species name reference either be a unique identifier, or be convertible, using automated means, to a unique identifier. John On Mar 25, 2013, at 11:18, Nan Galbraith ngalbra...@whoi.edu wrote: Hi all - Species taxonomies are not like chemical vocabularies, in that terms for organisms change over time. There are some big projects involved in maintaining these taxonomies, and we probably don't want to commit to launching a parallel effort. The ubio project has a decent description of the problem, at http://www.ubio.org/index.php?pagename=background_intro So, it seems to me that if we're going to expand CF to accommodate biological data, we should follow Roy's advice, and have a 'generic' standard name that means 'organism count' and add at least one required attribute pointing to a taxonomic name server (with a version date). The 'current' species name could be included in the long_name attribute. Although it's a valid point that existing search tools don't know about extra attributes, the effort of keeping up with the changes in terms could render CF useless for this kind of data otherwise. Regards - Nan On 3/25/13 5:00 AM, Jonathan Gregory wrote: Dear all I agree with Philip that cfu should be spelled out. I was also going to make the same point about Roy's proposal being different from our treatment of chemical species, which are encoded in the standard name; this system seems to be working. One reason for keeping this approach was the green dog problem. That particular phrase is actually Roy's, if I remember correctly. That is, we wish to prevent nonsensical constructions, by approving each name which makes (chemical) sense individually. However Roy argues that there is an order of magnitude more biological species to deal with than chemical. I don't think that keeping the same approach (encoding in the standard name) would break the system, but it would make the standard name table very large. Perhaps more importantly, if there were so many species, I expect that data-writers would simply assume that each of the possible combinations of pattern and species did already exist in the standard name table, without bothering to check or have them approved. That would defeat the object of the system of individual approval. We don't have to follow the chemical approach. For named geographical regions and surface area types (vegetation types etc.) we use string-valued coordinate variables, rather like Roy proposes here. To follow that approach we would need a new table, subsidiary to the standard name table, containing a list of controlled names of biological species. We would use the same approval process to add names to this list as we do for the standard name table. (This is what we do for geographical regions and area types.) We would then have a standard_name such as number_concentration_of_biological_species_in_sea_water whose definition would note that a data variable with this standard_name must have a string-valued auxiliary coordinate variable of biological_species containing a valid name from the biological species table. If there is just one species, the auxiliary coordinate variable wouldn't need a dimension, but this construction would also allow a single data variable to contain data for several species, by having a dimension of size greater than one. Cheers Jonathan ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata -- *** * Nan
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens
On 03/21/2013 02:12 PM, John Maurer wrote: I believe the canonical units in UDUNITS parlance would translate to m-3, which is what I find in the standard name table for other number_concentration_* quantities. Yup. If the dimension of the physical quantity is number per volume, then the SI unit would be m-3. (The problem with the atmospheric surface density quantities is that they need to be convertable with areic amount of substance; consequently, moles and molecules creep in). --Steve ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens
Dear All, I see Pandora's Box opening before us. I have been down the road of setting up my equivalent to Standard Names (the BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary) with concepts that include specification of the biological entity, which is why I have a vocabulary with getting on for 30,000 concepts. So I have things like 'Abundance of species X','Carbon biomass of species X', 'Nitrogen biomass of species X', 'Average specimen length of species X' and so on. In recent discussions within SeaDataNet and the EU ODIP project I have been persuaded that this approach is unsustainable and that what we should be aiming for in these projects is an approach where the Standard Name equivalent is something like 'Abundance of biological entity' and then have a separate metadata element (i.e. variable attribute) for the biological entity that should be related an established taxonomic standard such as WoRMS (http://www.marinespecies.org/). So, which path should CF follow? An additional point is that I would prefer not to have the semantics of what was measured encoded into the units of measure. The way I've approached CFU is through concepts phrased like ' Abundance (colony-forming units) of Vibrio cholerae (WoRMS 395085) per unit volume of the water body' where colony-forming units is a qualifying semantic on abundance (the term I prefer to number_concentration, but I appreciate the precedent in existing Standard Names). So, IF we choose the path of naming the beasties in the standard name my preferred syntax would be: cfu_number_concentration_of enterococcus _in_sea_water with canonical units of m-3 as John suggested. I have copied this response to the SeaDataNet Technical Task Team so they are aware that this issue is being discussed in CF. Cheers, Roy. Please note that I now work part-time from Tuesday to Thursday. E-mail response on other days is possible but not guaranteed! From: CF-metadata [mailto:cf-metadata-boun...@cgd.ucar.edu] On Behalf Of John Maurer Sent: 21 March 2013 20:12 To: cf-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu Subject: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens Aloha CF group, I would like to propose the following standard names related to water quality measurements of the bacteria Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens: number_concentration_of_enterococcus_in_sea_water number_concentration_of_clostridium_perfringens_in_sea_water These are normally measured with units of CFU/100 mL, where CFU stands for Colony-Forming Unitshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony-forming_unit. I believe the canonical units in UDUNITS parlance would translate to m-3, which is what I find in the standard name table for other number_concentration_* quantities. For descriptions of each, I would propose: number_concentration_of_enterococcus_in_sea_water: Number concentration means the number of particles or other specified objects per unit volume. In this context, it represents the number of colony-forming units (CFU) of bacteria belonging to the genus Enterococcus. This indicator bacteria has been correlated with the presence of human pathogens (disease-causing organisms) and therefore with human illnesses such as gastroenteritis, diarrhea, and various infections in epidemiological studies. As such, it is commonly measured in beach water quality monitoring programs. number_concentration_of_clostridium_perfringens_in_sea_water: Number concentration means the number of particles or other specified objects per unit volume. In this context, it represents the number of colony-forming units (CFU) of bacteria belonging to the species Clostridium perfringens. Because this bacteria is a normal component of the human intestinal tract, its presence in samples of sea water can be used as a tracer of sewage contamination. As such, it is commonly measured in beach water quality monitoring programs. Thanks, John Maurer Pacific Islands Ocean Observing System (PacIOOS) University of Hawaii at Manoa This message (and any attachments) is for the recipient only. NERC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the contents of this email and any reply you make may be disclosed by NERC unless it is exempt from release under the Act. Any material supplied to NERC may be stored in an electronic records management system. ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
Re: [CF-metadata] proposed standard names for Enterococcus and Clostridium perfringens
On 03/22/2013 03:57 AM, Lowry, Roy K. wrote: An additional point is that I would prefer not to have the semantics of what was measured encoded into the units of measure. I couldn't agree more. The NIST also agrees. See sections 7.4 and 7.5 of http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/SP811/sec07.html. --Steve ___ CF-metadata mailing list CF-metadata@cgd.ucar.edu http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata
