Month: January 2019

Enlarge / Gode wind farm off the coast of Germany. (credit: Ørsted)

According to the Fraunhofer Institute, Germany's renewable power sector produced more electricity than coal in 2018 for the first time ever, with renewables providing 40 percent of the year's produced electricity and coal providing 38 percent.

Of course, "renewables" include an aggregate of different sources—solar, wind, hydroelectric, and biomass—while coal is just a single fuel source (renewable energy has not yet displaced all fossil fuel use in Germany, you'll note). But coal has long been a staple of the country's energy mix, and Germany looks poised to reduce the amount of coal-fired power on its grid significantly, even shutting down its last coal mine in November. From now on, coal for the approximately 120 coal-fired power plants that still power the German grid will be imported from the US, Russia, or Colombia, according to Bloomberg.

The massive year for renewables was led by continued expansion in the wind energy sector. German wind power output was up 5.4 percent year over year, and output is expected to increase again in 2019. Alone, wind contributed to covering 19 percent of Germany's 2018 electricity demand, the largest source second only to lignite coal.

Jonathan Gitlin

Every time we get to drive one of the Kia Niro family, it seems like we fall in love. At the beginning of 2017, our UK offshoot tested the regular Niro hybrid (and its Hyundai Ioniq cousin) and came away with the impression that Nissan, Toyota, and the rest of the competition should worry. Later that year, I got slightly lost on the shores of the Chesapeake in a Niro, an enjoyable experience that was replicated in 2018 when I spent a week with one on the streets of Washington, DC. Soon, it will be time to try out the battery electric version—uncomplicatedly named the Niro EV—when it arrives on these shores. But today, it's the turn of the middle child: the Kia Niro PHEV plug-in hybrid.

It’s mostly the same as the one we already tested

The Niro PHEV shares an awful lot with its not-pluggable hybrid sibling. It looks virtually identical, save for some badges and a charger port behind the left front wheel. It's exactly the same length (171.5 inches/4,356mm), height (60.8 inches/1,544mm), width (71.1 inches/1,805mm), and wheelbase (106.3 inches/2,700mm), and all the interior dimensions are identical, too, so you don't sacrifice any legroom, headroom, or cargo capacity. It has exactly the same suspension set-up—MacPherson struts up front, independent multilink at the rear. The transmission is the same six-speed dual clutch gearbox. It even uses an identical aluminum 1.6L, four-cylinder, 16 valve direct-injection gasoline engine, which provides 104hp (78kW) and 109lb-ft (148Nm) via the Atkinson cycle. (If these details leave you wanting more information, please refer to the aforementioned prior coverage on the Niro.)

Enlarge / A scientist transplants engineered tobacco for testing. (credit: Brian Stauffer/University of Illinois)

The vast majority of life on Earth depends, either directly or indirectly, on photosynthesis for its energy. And photosynthesis depends on an enzyme called RuBisCO, which uses carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to build sugars. So, by extension, RuBisCO may be the most important catalyst on the planet.

Unfortunately, RuBisCO is, well, terrible at its job. It might not be obvious based on the plant growth around us, but the enzyme is not especially efficient at catalyzing the carbon dioxide reaction. And, worse still, it often uses oxygen instead. This produces a useless byproduct that, if allowed to build up, will eventually shut down photosynthesis entirely. It's estimated that crops such as wheat and rice lose anywhere from 20 to 50 percent of their growth potential due to this byproduct.

While plants have evolved ways of dealing with this byproduct, they're not especially efficient. So a group of researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana decided to step in and engineer a better way. The result? In field tests, the engineered plants grew up to 40 percent more mass than ones that relied on the normal pathways.

Enlarge / Democrats vs. Republicans. (credit: Getty Images | Linda Braucht)

The Federal Communications Commission will once again have a full lineup of five commissioners, with three Republicans and two Democrats. The FCC has had three Republicans but only one Democrat since Mignon Clyburn left the agency in May 2018.

Democrat Geoffrey Starks has been in line to replace Clyburn since June and was confirmed by the US Senate in a voice vote yesterday. Starks will join Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as one of two Democrats; the FCC's Republicans are Chairman Ajit Pai, Michael O'Rielly, and Brendan Carr.

Rosenworcel congratulated Starks in a statement, saying, "I look forward to working together on a broad range of our shared goals, from protecting consumers to serving the public interest to ensuring that every American has a fair shot at success in the digital age."

Enlarge / Chrome's dark mode.

Chrome 73 is going to include support for macOS 10.14's dark mode, with an alternative color scheme for its user interface that cuts the brightness. It's now clear that a Windows version of the same is in development, though it seems to trail the macOS version.

A bug report was spotted by Techdows, and preliminary work has been started to bring Windows its dark mode. Unlike its macOS counterpart, which should track the operating-system mode, the Windows dark mode currently has to be forcibly turned on with a command-line switch. Adding "--force-dark-mode" to the command line of current builds of Chrome 73 makes everything dark.

The macOS work has top priority (P1). The Windows work is only P2 (originally P3), surprisingly suggesting that it's less important, enough though Chrome has far more Windows 10 users than it does macOS users. Development of the Windows theme was at least, for a time, hindered by one of the developers not having a Windows laptop to use.

Enlarge (credit: TechBargains)

Greetings, Arsians! Courtesy of our friends at TechBargains, we have another round of deals to share. Today's list is headlined by a new low on the 500GB model of Samsung's 860 EVO SSD, which is currently down to $68.40 at Amazon with an on-site coupon.

It's not the pinnacle of performance at this point, but the 860 EVO is still fast enough for those looking to upgrade an aging PC saddled with an HDD or complement a device whose existing solid-state drive is running out of space. While competing SATA drives like Crucial's MX500 are currently available for a couple dollars less, the 860 EVO is a bit faster and generally more durable, so we think it's worth buying when the price difference is this slight.

Beyond that, we also have deals on a variety of Nintendo Switch games and accessories, Apple's HomePod, GoPro action cameras, and more. Have a look for yourself below.