NEOTROPICAL XENARTHRANS: a data set of occurrence of xenarthran species in the Neotropics

Xenarthrans – anteaters, sloths, and armadillos – have essential functions for ecosystem maintenance, such as insect control and nutrient cycling, playing key roles as ecosystem engineers. Because of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting pressure, and conflicts with 24 domestic dogs, these species have been threatened locally, regionally, or even across their full distribution ranges. The Neotropics harbor 21 species of armadillos, ten anteaters, and six sloths. Our dataset includes the families Chlamyphoridae (13), Dasypodidae (7), Myrmecophagidae (3), Bradypodidae (4), and Megalonychidae (2). We have no occurrence data on Dasypus pilosus (Dasypodidae). Regarding Cyclopedidae, until recently, only one species was recognized, but new genetic studies have revealed that the group is represented by seven species. In this data-paper, we compiled a total of 42,528 records of 31 species, represented by occurrence and quantitative data, totaling 24,847 unique georeferenced records. The geographic range is from the south of the USA, Mexico, and Caribbean countries at the northern portion of the Neotropics, to its austral distribution in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Regarding anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla has the most records (n=5,941), and Cyclopes sp. has the fewest (n=240). The armadillo species with the most data is Dasypus novemcinctus (n=11,588), and the least recorded for Calyptophractus retusus (n=33). With regards to sloth species, Bradypus variegatus has the most records (n=962), and Bradypus pygmaeus has the fewest (n=12). Our main objective with Neotropical Xenarthrans is to make occurrence and quantitative data available to facilitate more ecological research, particularly if we integrate the xenarthran data with other datasets of Neotropical Series which will become available very soon (i.e. Neotropical Carnivores, Neotropical Invasive Mammals, and Neotropical Hunters and Dogs). Therefore, studies on trophic cascades, hunting pressure, habitat loss, fragmentation effects, species invasion, and climate change effects will be possible with the Neotropical Xenarthrans dataset

Public Speaking: Practice & Ethics

From audience analysis to giving a presentation, Stand Up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking will guide students through the speech-making process. We believe that it is important to focus on the practical process of speech making because we want this book to be a user-friendly guide to creating, researching, and presenting public speeches. While both classic and current academic research in public speaking will guide the book, we do not want to lose the focus of helping students become more seasoned and polished public speakers. We believe that a new textbook in public speaking should first, and foremost, be a practical book that helps students prepare and deliver a variety of different types of speeches

Stand Up, Speak Out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking

The two key themes to Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking make it a welcomed addition to the choices you have for a public speaking textbook. First it focuses on helping students become more seasoned and polished public speakers, and second, its emphasis on ethics in communication. It is this practical approach and integrated ethical coverage that sets Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking apart from the other texts in this market. In a world that is bombarded by information, the skills set of public speaking is more important today than ever. According to an address given by Tony Karrer at the TechKnowledge 2009, the New York Times has more information in one week than individuals in the 1800s would encounter in a lifetime. Currently, the amount of information available to people doubles every 18 months and is expected to double weekly by 2015. In a world filled with so much information, knowing how to effectively organize and present one’s ideas through oral communication is paramount. From audience analysis to giving a presentation, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking will guide students through the speech making process. The authors focus on the process of speech making because they have created this book to be a user-friendly guide to creating, researching, and presenting public speeches. While both classic and current academic research in public speaking guide this book, the authors believe that a new textbook in public speaking should first, and foremost, be a practical book that helps students prepare and deliver a variety of different types of speeches — and that is the primary goal of this book. With practicality in mind, the authors developed, Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, as a streamlined public speaking textbook. Many public speaking textbooks today contain over twenty different chapters, which is often impossible to cover in a ten-week quarter or a sixteen-week semester; this textbook is eighteen unique chapters. The fifteen chapters are divided into four clear units of information: introduction to public speaking, speech preparation, speech creation, and speech presentation. In addition to practicality, this text has a focus on the ethics of public speaking from both a source’s and a receiver’s point of view. In 2006 Pearson, Child, Mattern, and Kahl examined the state of ethics in public speaking textbooks. Specifically, the researchers used the NCA Credo on Ethical Communication to guide their study of ethics in public speaking textbooks. Ultimately, the researchers focused on eight specific categories of public speaking ethics content areas: freedom of speech, honesty, plagiarism, ethical listening, ethical research, hate words, diversity, and codes of ethics. As a whole, the top ten public speaking books varied in their degrees of exposure to the various ethical issues. The authors believe that using the NCA Credo on Ethical Communication as the basis for discussing ethics within this book in addition to the latest research in ethics and communication will help students see how ethics can be applied to the public speaking context. All three of the coauthors on this text have conducted research on the topic of communication ethics and written about how ethics is important in every facet of students’ communicative lives. Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking, is intended for the one-semester Public Speaking course

Variational Bayes estimation of mixing coefficients

We investigate theoretically some properties of variational Bayes approximations based on estimating the mixing coefficients of known densities. We show that, with probability 1 as the sample size n grows large, the iterative algorithm for the variational Bayes approximation converges locally to the maximum likelihood estimator at the rate of O(1/n). Moreover, the variational posterior distribution for the parameters is shown to be asymptotically normal with the same mean but a different covariance matrix compared with those for the maximum likelihood estimator. Furthermore we prove that the covariance matrix from the variational Bayes approximation is `too small' compared with that for the MLE, so that resulting interval estimates for the parameters will be unrealistically narrow

NEOTROPICAL XENARTHRANS: a data set of occurrence of xenarthran species in the Neotropics

Xenarthrans—anteaters, sloths, and armadillos—have essential functions for ecosystem maintenance, such as insect control and nutrient cycling, playing key roles as ecosystem engineers. Because of habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting pressure, and conflicts with domestic dogs, these species have been threatened locally, regionally, or even across their full distribution ranges. The Neotropics harbor 21 species of armadillos, 10 anteaters, and 6 sloths. Our data set includes the families Chlamyphoridae (13), Dasypodidae (7), Myrmecophagidae (3), Bradypodidae (4), and Megalonychidae (2). We have no occurrence data on Dasypus pilosus (Dasypodidae). Regarding Cyclopedidae, until recently, only one species was recognized, but new genetic studies have revealed that the group is represented by seven species. In this data paper, we compiled a total of 42,528 records of 31 species, represented by occurrence and quantitative data, totaling 24,847 unique georeferenced records. The geographic range is from the southern United States, Mexico, and Caribbean countries at the northern portion of the Neotropics, to the austral distribution in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. Regarding anteaters, Myrmecophaga tridactyla has the most records (n = 5,941), and Cyclopes sp. have the fewest (n = 240). The armadillo species with the most data is Dasypus novemcinctus (n = 11,588), and the fewest data are recorded for Calyptophractus retusus (n = 33). With regard to sloth species, Bradypus variegatus has the most records (n = 962), and Bradypus pygmaeus has the fewest (n = 12). Our main objective with Neotropical Xenarthrans is to make occurrence and quantitative data available to facilitate more ecological research, particularly if we integrate the xenarthran data with other data sets of Neotropical Series that will become available very soon (i.e., Neotropical Carnivores, Neotropical Invasive Mammals, and Neotropical Hunters and Dogs). Therefore, studies on trophic cascades, hunting pressure, habitat loss, fragmentation effects, species invasion, and climate change effects will be possible with the Neotropical Xenarthrans data set. Please cite this data paper when using its data in publications. We also request that researchers and teachers inform us of how they are using these data