Red or Blue? New research reveals that color of light impacts plant growth
A picture depicting a tomato plant. Photo courtesy of Shuttershock.

Red or Blue? New research reveals that color of light impacts plant growth

Researchers have recently discovered a way to make agrivoltaics—the use of solar panels to grow and cultivate crops—more efficient. They have found that the different levels of wavelengths have an impact on the crops and how quickly they grow. Studies have shown that agrivoltaics can…

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Manhattan Institute turns its attention to New College: things to know about this conservative think tank
A screenshot of the Manhattan Institute logo superimposed over the city skyline at sunset. (Photo taken from manhattan-institute.org)

Manhattan Institute turns its attention to New College: things to know about this conservative think tank

Following their appointments, something the New College community quickly recognized about the seven new Board of Trustee (BOT) members was that not all of them had prior experience working in educational institutions, and many were coming from out of state. Even without the work credentials…

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Ohio train derailment: health concerns and waste removal begin
Image of multiple train cars derailed and on fire. Photo taken by Gene Puskar.

Ohio train derailment: health concerns and waste removal begin

Following the environmental disaster that occurred on Feb. 3 in East Palestine, Ohio, when a Norfolk Southern train crashed and caught fire, the roughly 4,700 residents of East Palestine and the surrounding area are still being affected by the derailment. The train had a total…

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Former New College President Patricia Okker gives first interview
Former New College president Patricia Okker, courtesy of LinkedIn.

Former New College President Patricia Okker gives first interview

We don’t know what could happen was the general sentiment shared by many members of the New College community in the weeks leading up to the first Board of Trustees (BOT) meeting scheduled just after a slate of new conservative appointments by Gov. Ron DeSantis.…

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Student letters addressed to Dr. Patricia Okker
Letters from New College students to their former president. Photo courtesy of Nickolas Steinig

Student letters addressed to Dr. Patricia Okker

Current students were invited to submit open, unsigned letters to Dr. Patricia Okker, for initial “delivery” via publication in the Catalyst. The full text of each submission appears below. Dear former president Okker,I am sorry to hear about your termination. I sincerely hope that you…

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Turkey-Syria earthquakes: How New College can help?
A man sitting in the rubble caused by the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria. Photo courtesy of AFP.

Turkey-Syria earthquakes: How New College can help?

On Feb. 6, southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria were hit with a 7.8 earthquake leaving more than 45,000 people dead and millions of people displaced as rescue teams struggle to save them. In the immediate hours following the initial earthquake, the…

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DeSantis takes aim at College Board for “indoctrination” and lacking “educational value”
DeSantis has suggested earlier this month that Florida could do away with College Board entirely--but it's not yet clear how, when or what it might be replaced with. Image created by Caspian Rizzo

DeSantis takes aim at College Board for “indoctrination” and lacking “educational value”

Over the past few weeks, a dizzying flurry of announcements have come from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office concerning Florida’s high school curriculum. Most recently, the governor has taken aim at the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) African American studies curriculum, lambasting it as woke indoctrination.…

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Florida student athletes required to identify gender assigned at birth
An empty locker room. (Courtesy of flickr.)

Florida student athletes required to identify gender assigned at birth

The Florida High School Athletic Association (FHSAA) has been fighting controversy in recent weeks after discussing the possibility of requiring student athletes to answer questions about their menstrual history on the state-wide pre-participation physical evaluation form. The form has included questions about menstrual history since…

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Artificial Intelligence or just text prediction? How ChatGPT and other Open AI programs function
An AI-generated New College student. Photo courtesy of Basil Pursley and DALL-E

Artificial Intelligence or just text prediction? How ChatGPT and other Open AI programs function

OpenAI, the renowned artificial intelligence research laboratory, has made groundbreaking progress in the field of natural language processing with its state-of-the-art language model, ChatGPT. As one of the largest language models in the world, ChatGPT has been able to generate coherent and realistic text in…

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Housing crisis at California Polytechnic University, Humboldt becomes a source of anger and outrage
Cal Poly Humboldt's campus entrance. (Courtesy of flickr.)

Housing crisis at California Polytechnic University, Humboldt becomes a source of anger and outrage

On Feb. 4, California Polytechnic University, Humboldt announced that incoming first-year students would have priority for all on-campus housing. While the exact number of incoming students in the fall is still unknown, the university did receive 19,000 applications in January, almost doubling the amount of…

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