The Astropy Problem

The Astropy Project (http://astropy.org) is, in its own words, "a community effort to develop a single core package for Astronomy in Python and foster interoperability between Python astronomy packages." For five years this project has been managed, written, and operated as a grassroots, self-organized, almost entirely volunteer effort while the software is used by the majority of the astronomical community. Despite this, the project has always been and remains to this day effectively unfunded. Further, contributors receive little or no formal recognition for creating and supporting what is now critical software. This paper explores the problem in detail, outlines possible solutions to correct this, and presents a few suggestions on how to address the sustainability of general purpose astronomical software

Solar photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of urea in water coupled to green hydrogen production

In past decades, the intensification of human activities has led to an increase in pollution and energy demand. Photoelectrochemical systems have emerged as an alternative for the decentralized management of domestic wastewater with the potential of recovering energy while degrading pollutants such as urea. Tungsten oxide (WO3) has been traditionally used for water splitting, but the use of this material for the removal of waste from water coupled to hydrogen production is not deeply known until now. This contribution shows an exhaustive and systematic investigation on WO3 photoanodes for the photoelectrochemical oxidation of urea and the generation of hydrogen, with insights on the reaction mechanism, detailed nitrogen balance investigation of the process, and analysis of the performance compared to well-accepted materials. The WO3 platelets were successfully synthesized in situ on fluorine doped tin oxide glass by a hydrothermal method. The performance of WO3 was compared to titanium dioxide (TiO2) as a benchmark. The photocurrent was enhanced for both electrodes when urea was added to the electrolyte, with WO3 showing one order of magnitude higher photocurrent than TiO2. The WO3 electrode showed a peak incident photon-to-current efficiency of 43% at 360 nm and a much greater rate constant for urea oxidation (1.47 × 10−2 min−1), compared to the TiO2 photoanode (16% at 340 nm and 1.1 × 10−3 min−1). The influence of different reactor configurations was also evaluated testing one- and two-compartment back-face irradiated photoelectrochemical cells. Hydrogen was generated with a Faradaic efficiency of 87.3% and a solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 1.1%. These findings aim to contribute to the development of technologies based on the photoelectrochemical production of hydrogen coupled with the oxidation of pollutants in wastewater

Dataset of paper "Solar photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of urea in water coupled to green hydrogen production"

Dataset of paper "Solar photoelectrocatalytic oxidation of urea in water coupled to green hydrogen production" Material characterization for TiO2 and WO3 electrodes. Photoelectrochemical characterization for TiO2 and WO3. One compartment cell characterization. Urea oxidation experiments for TiO2 and WO3 electrodes. Urea oxidation and products using one compartment cell. Production of NO2- during urea oxidation. Evolution of NO3− oxidation in time and conversion to NH4+. Two compartment cell characterization. Urea oxidation and products using two-compartment cell