It’s been a while since I last used LaTeX since I am in industry now, but there is definitely a learning curve. If you are talking about undergrads, then it might be too steep a challenge for most to want to take on unless they plan on pursuing academia long-term. Like others have mentioned, LaTeX is a kind of standard that you see used a lot in academic circles. Some journals also like or support things that are created through tex and will have their own templates to use.

Basically, LaTeX consists of writing in a markup language, like your screenshot, and then running that through a processor that interprets your .tex file and creates the formatted output (usually a pdf). Back in my day, TexnicCenter was the program of choice to write the actual .tex file, but some quick searching and it looks like VSCode with an appropriate extension is probably one of the best/easiest ways to do it now.

The most annoying part of tex is references. I remember being utterly confused by BibTeX when I was trying to get it to work. I am way out of date on what best practices for today might be, but I hope they have improved that process somewhat.

Seconding LaTeX as the gold standard for formatting math/science in written form. Some of my peers in grad school (physics) wrote up their assignments in it (I opted instead for massive reams of handwritten work). However, I did write up my thesis in LaTeX. My university had a LaTeX template for a thesis that took care of the boilerplate formatting, I just had to focus on the content.

I own a Prius (not a PHEV though, just a hybrid) and can corroborate that my mileage goes down significantly in the winter months. It is a combination of a couple factors in my experience.

• Needing to run the engine more to heat things up for defrosting and heating the cabin.
• Related to the above, I tend to idle a lot more in the winter while cleaning ice/snow off the car, letting it warm up, or clearing the driveway.
• Switching to winter tires (Blizzaks) negatively impacts rolling resistance compared to the LRR tires (Ecopias) I use the rest of the year.

I tend to average ~45 mpg in the summer and ~37 mpg in the winter over the past two years.