Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil: setting the baseline knowledge on the animal diversity in Brazil

The limited temporal completeness and taxonomic accuracy of species lists, made available in a traditional manner in scientific publications, has always represented a problem. These lists are invariably limited to a few taxonomic groups and do not represent up-to-date knowledge of all species and classifications. In this context, the Brazilian megadiverse fauna is no exception, and the Catálogo Taxonômico da Fauna do Brasil (CTFB) (http://fauna.jbrj.gov.br/), made public in 2015, represents a database on biodiversity anchored on a list of valid and expertly recognized scientific names of animals in Brazil. The CTFB is updated in near real time by a team of more than 800 specialists. By January 1, 2024, the CTFB compiled 133,691 nominal species, with 125,138 that were considered valid. Most of the valid species were arthropods (82.3%, with more than 102,000 species) and chordates (7.69%, with over 11,000 species). These taxa were followed by a cluster composed of Mollusca (3,567 species), Platyhelminthes (2,292 species), Annelida (1,833 species), and Nematoda (1,447 species). All remaining groups had less than 1,000 species reported in Brazil, with Cnidaria (831 species), Porifera (628 species), Rotifera (606 species), and Bryozoa (520 species) representing those with more than 500 species. Analysis of the CTFB database can facilitate and direct efforts towards the discovery of new species in Brazil, but it is also fundamental in providing the best available list of valid nominal species to users, including those in science, health, conservation efforts, and any initiative involving animals. The importance of the CTFB is evidenced by the elevated number of citations in the scientific literature in diverse areas of biology, law, anthropology, education, forensic science, and veterinary science, among others

Weyl–Wigner description of massless Dirac plasmas: ab initio quantum plasmonics for monolayer graphene

We derive, from first principles and using the Weyl–Wigner formalism, a fully quantum kinetic model describing the dynamics in phase space of Dirac electrons in single-layer graphene. In the limit ℏ → 0, we recover the well-known semiclassical Boltzmann equation, widely used in graphene plasmonics. The polarizability function is calculated and, as a benchmark, we retrieve the result based on the random-phase approximation. By keeping all orders in ℏ , we use the newly derived kinetic equation to construct a fluid model for macroscopic variables written in the pseudospin space. As we show, the novel ℏ -dependent terms can be written as corrections to the average current and pressure tensor. Upon linearization of the fluid equations, we obtain a quantum correction to the plasmon dispersion relation, of order ℏ ^2 , akin to the Bohm term of quantum plasmas. In addition, the average variables provide a way to examine the value of the effective hydrodynamic mass of the carriers. For the latter, we find a relation in which Drude’s mass is multiplied by the square of a velocity-dependent, Lorentz-like factor, with the speed of light replaced by the Fermi velocity, a feature stemming from the quasi-relativistic nature of the Dirac fermions

The European Integrated Tokamak Modelling (ITM) effort: achievements and first physics results

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