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SporeLag, RIPLRT's open-source environmental exposure package, joins CRAN
SporeLag, an R package by Dr. Félix E. Rivera-Mariani for building lagged and moving-average environmental exposure variables, has been accepted into the Comprehensive R Archive Network.
SporeLag, an open-source R package developed by RIPLRT principal investigator Dr. Félix E. Rivera-Mariani, has been accepted into the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), the primary distribution channel for peer-reviewed R software used by researchers worldwide.
The package grew out of our long-running collaboration with Dr. Benjamín Bolaños-Rosero at the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine on airborne fungal spores and respiratory health. Environmental time series such as daily spore counts are rarely tidy: observations go missing, sampling intervals are irregular, and exposure data must be aligned in time with health outcomes that respond days later. SporeLag standardizes the construction of lagged and moving-average exposure variables so that these steps are reproducible and consistent across studies.
Although it was built for aerobiology, SporeLag applies to any time-varying exposure, including:
- fungal spores and pollen,
- particulate matter and ozone,
- other daily environmental measurements used in epidemiology and forecasting.
CRAN acceptance means the package passed CRAN's technical review and can be installed by anyone with install.packages("SporeLag"). It reflects the Institute's commitment to open, reproducible computational tools that let other groups build on our exposure-science methods.
Adapted from Lynn University News.