The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

The student news site of The Harker School.

Harker Aquila

Figure 01 stands at the forefront of innovation, showcasing a level of sophistication unseen in previous humanoids. Leveraging stored information, Figure 01 makes inferences rapidly, similar to OpenAI’s GPT-3 and GPT-4, and can also express its thoughts through a text-to-speech model.

Figure 01 revolutionizes humanoid technology through robotics and AI

by Ashley Mo April 17, 2024

“Hey Figure 01, what do you see right now?” “I see a red apple on a plate in the center of the table, a drying rack with cups and a plate and you standing nearby with your hand on the table.” Visual...

Students and staff witness the partial solar eclipse with special solar viewers. These glasses prevent eye damage by filtering out harmful radiation from the Sun.

Upper school community marvels at partial solar eclipse

by Victor Gong and Jessica Wang April 12, 2024

Students and staff across the upper school campus gathered outdoors during lunch on Monday, with eyes, through lenses and filters, affixed to the sun. The partial solar eclipse seized the spotlight on...

An NVIDIA RTX GeForce 4070 Super sits on a wooden table, donning two fans, 12 GB of memory, and a bandwidth of 504 GB/s. NVIDIAs recent success largely lies within its state-of-the-art graphics processing units.

(Provided by Ivan Chen)

Dominating the digital landscape: Core innovations drive NVIDIA to new heights

by Victor Gong and Mihir Kotbagi April 3, 2024

Every year, hundreds of eager buyers flock to Best Buys or constantly refresh online shopping websites, all for one purpose – to get the latest graphics processing unit on launch day. While most casual...

This year alone, California has seen 39 power outages. The world consumed 176 quadrillion watt-hours of general energy in 2021, and the generation of electricity from coal emitted a whopping 868 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Sourced from World Population Review and U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Global Reset: Energy use sparks climate concern

by Ashley Mo and Claire Zhao March 28, 2024

The hum of electricity halts. Lights flicker and extinguish. We’re plunged into a world of disorientation, our hands grasping for flashlights and candles in the eerie darkness. With nothing but our makeshift...

Upper school English teacher Beth Wahl stands in front of her bougainvillea plant, a type of tropical shrub that grows up to 30 feet tall. Before we renovated our house and we added a second story, I dreamed of having bougainvillea that goes up two stories, Wahl said. Now, it blooms throughout the year and creates this incredibly vibrant magenta color. (Provided by Beth Wahl)

In full bloom

by Lily Shi and Ashley Mo March 21, 2024

Returning home to fresh greenery after a long day, whether thriving vegetation or potted succulents, can lighten anyone’s mood. The act of nurturing plants holds a special place in many households.  The...

High school coders collaborate on the novice problem set during HPCs Harker Programming Invitation in Nichols Atrium on Mar. 9. Groups of up to three students worked together to solve ten questions in two hours in the novice division.

Coders compete in Programming Club’s annual Harker Programming Invitational

by Tiffany Zhu and Emma Gao March 15, 2024

Around 150 middle and high school students from the Bay Area participated in the annual Harker Programming Invitational (HPI), a team-based competition organized by Harker Programming Club (HPC) and held...

Upper school chemistry teacher Andrew Irvine assists Arturo Vilalta (10) with the paper chromatography lab. Students determined which M&M flavors contained yellow #5 using chromatography.

Honors Chemistry students sweeten science with M&M chromatography

by Ashley Mo, Assistant STEM Editor March 8, 2024

Honors Chemistry students conducted a paper chromatography lab using colored dye from M&Ms to determine which flavors contained the synthetic food dye Tartrazine, also known as “Yellow #5,” over...

William Chen 03 lectures to Green Team about sustainable farming on Stanfords O’Donohue Educational Farm. Besides talking about his own experiences, Chen also discussed the harmful effects of pesticides and herbicides, the benefits of eating organic foods, and ways to support sustainable farming.

Green Team speaker highlights methods and mission behind sustainable farming

by Victor Gong and Ashley Mo March 6, 2024

Green Team invited Harker alum William Chen ‘03 to present on sustainable farming on Monday. Chen is the facility and production coordinator at Stanford’s O’Donohue Educational Farm and has previously...

WiSTEM members prepare to start the AI workshop on Feb. 23. Volunteers discussed logistics like screen sharing and changes in the Google Slides before the workshop.

WiSTEM shares STEM knowledge in TechGirlz AI workshop

by Ashley Mo and Mendy Mao March 6, 2024

Women in STEM Club hosted a virtual TechGirlz AI workshop about AI algorithms and applications on Feb. 2 from 4-6 p.m. and on Feb. 23 from 3:30-5:30 p.m. WiSTEM members led the event, and 26 girls...

Studies conducted by white scientists on unknowning minority communities imprinted long-lasting distrust
for medical instituions. Such studies include those conducted on the Havasupai Indians and Black men in the Tuskegee experiment.

Culture of negligence: Flaws in minorities’ healthcare persist

by Hima Thota, Co-Features Editor February 29, 2024

Medicine in the United States stands as an exemplar for medical breakthroughs throughout the global medical community. But underneath the history of the United States’ success in medicine lies the systematic...

Light pollution mutes the sky over Los Angeles. “When you have city artificial lighting in the area, it brightens the night sky, just like the sun brightens the sky and turns it into day,” astronomy teacher Dr. Eric Nelson said.

Global Reset: Where have all the stars gone?

by Jonathan Xue and Ashley Mo February 23, 2024

Far above the Earth we inhabit lies an infinite abyss, scattered with universes undiscovered and galaxies unexplored. Through our night sky, we capture a fleeting glimpse of this world sublime, a window...

Illustration by Emily Tan and Claire Zhao. Design by Victor Gong.

STEM Scene: Feb. 22

by Mihir Kotbagi and Claire Zhao February 22, 2024

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