The selective conversion of fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs) into even-numbered paraffins remains a fundamental challenge, since conventional deoxygenation catalysts promote hydrodeoxygenation alongside decarbonylation or decarboxylation pathways, thereby producing both even- and odd-numbered hydrocarbons. Here, we demonstrate that a noble-metal-free Cu–Zn/γ-Al2O3 catalyst, rationally designed to integrate hydrogenation and dehydration functionalities, enables a cascade reaction pathway that selectively produces even-numbered n-paraffins from FAMEs. Under high-pressure hydrogen, methyl laurate is sequentially converted through aldehyde and alcohol intermediates, followed by dehydration to α-olefins and subsequent hydrogenation to paraffins. Detailed product analysis reveals that Cu–Zn sites catalyze efficient hydrogenation, while moderate Lewis acidity of γ-Al2O3 promotes alcohol dehydration without inducing excessive cracking, thereby preserving the carbon backbone. As a result, the Cu[1.5]–Zn[3]/γ-Al2O3 catalyst achieves near-complete conversion with an even-paraffin yield approaching the practical upper limit reported for FAME hydrogenation. Systematic variation of Cu–Zn loading and support textural properties establishes a clear structure–function relationship: increasing surface coverage by Cu–Zn species shifts selectivity toward fatty alcohols, whereas balanced dispersion on alumina favors completion of the dehydration–hydrogenation cascade. The catalyst maintains high performance in shaped form and demonstrates scalability in continuous bench-scale operation using soybean-oil-derived FAMEs. These results identify controlled integration of hydrogenation sites and moderate acidity as a general design principle for producing even-numbered paraffins from renewable lipid feedstocks without noble metals.
Aqueous supercapacitors (SCs) are attractive energy storage devices owing to their high power density and operational safety; however, their practical deployment is constrained by the limited operating voltage window imposed by water electrolysis, which restricts the attainable energy density. Herein, we report a lead (Pb) single-atom anchored on nitrogen-doped carbon (SA-Pb/NC), where Pb, as a p-block metal, modulates the adsorption strength of H*/H2O species at Pb-N4 sites. Such modulation effectively suppresses water-electrolysis reactions, thereby expanding the electrochemical operational voltage window and enhancing energy storage performance. SA-Pb/NC delivers a specific capacitance of 530.07 F g-1, nearly twice that of bare NC. A symmetric SA-Pb/NC device further achieves an energy density of 38.67 Wh kg-1 within an ultrawide voltage window of 1.50 V. Remarkably, no detectable H2 evolution is observed for the SA-Pb/NC device even after 48 h of continuous operation, whereas the NC-based device generates 0.09 & micro;mol of H2 within only 12 h. Theoretical calculations further reveal that SA-Pb sites optimize K+ adsorption-desorption kinetics while weakening the affinity for H2O-derived intermediates, thereby enabling efficient charge storage and effective suppression of water electrolysis. This work provides a general strategy for designing high-energy-density aqueous supercapacitors through voltage-window expansion enabled by lead single-atom sites.
Despite their central role in youth motivation research, achievement goals and social interdependence attitudes are examined in isolation, obscuring their reciprocal dynamics. Using random-intercept cross-lagged models, this study examined their co-development and links to stress and achievement. Sample comprised two Korean longitudinal cohorts. Study 1 included 6,908 participants (Mage at baseline = 12.83, SDage = 0.38, 47.6
The demand for lithium-ion batteries is increasing, making it crucial to select materials that accommodate specific user needs and enhance overall performance. In this context, it is essential to provide solutions for characterizing battery performance through non-destructive methods such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), which enables electrochemical performance diagnosis of the cell. In this study, a numerical model of a lithium-ion cell with an NCA electrode was developed using COMSOL Multiphysics. It enabled us to investigate the key variables that influence the electrochemical impedance response and their quantitative impacts through a sensitivity analysis. Furthermore, the investigations were interpreted with electrochemical kinetics. These findings indicate that optimizing parameters exhibiting high sensitivity offers a practical method to improve the fidelity of the model’s predictions with experimental observations. This enhances both accuracy and the quality of fit, and importantly, means fewer parameters need to be thoroughly investigated, leading to a more efficient workflow.
Reconstructing detailed geometry and realistic appearance from a single RGB image is essential yet fundamentally challenging due to inherent ambiguities such as occlusion, lighting variations, and texture-geometry entanglement. While recent diffusion-based generative models have significantly improved novel view synthesis, existing approaches suffer from two critical limitations: lack of cross-view geometric consistency and insufficient cross-domain semantic alignment. To address these issues, we introduce UniCross3D, a unified cross-view and cross-domain diffusion framework designed explicitly for consistent and physically coherent 3D generation. UniCross3D features two novel contributions: (1) a cross-view latent regularization that enforces cross-view geometric consistency across synthesized viewpoints by penalizing latent variance, and (2) a cross-domain mutual information objective grounded in the physics of image formation, explicitly aligning synthesized color and normal maps. Extensive experiments demonstrate that UniCross3D achieves significantly improved view consistency and semantic alignment over state-of-the-art methods and yields higher-fidelity reconstructions, particularly under challenging textures and ambiguous viewpoints.
