Vassar College Digital Library

Vassar Scholarship

Vassar Scholarship, the institutional repository formerly known as Digital Window, reflects the research and scholarly output of the Vassar College community.  It provides access to a variety of collections, including senior theses and projects across a wide range of disciplines.

Automatic control: the vertebral column of dogfish sharks behaves as a continuously variable transmission with smoothly shifting functions

Publication Date
2016-July-07
Document Type
Document Type
Abstract

During swimming in dogfish sharks, Squalus acanthias, both the intervertebral joints and the vertebral centra undergo significant strain. To investigate this system, unique among vertebrates, we cyclically bent isolated segments of 10 vertebrae and nine joints….

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Coalition for Abolition: Strategic Alliances and Antiprison Activism in California's Central Valley

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

There are currently over 3 million people locked behind bars in United States prisons, jails, and detention centers. In this era of mass incarceration, prison abolitionists envision a world entirely without prisons. The politics of abolition are complex, and the...

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RELI-250-51 Across Religious Boundaries: Understanding Differences

Publication Date
2015-January-01
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Testing biological hypotheses with embodied robots: adaptations, accidents, and by-products in the evolution of vertebrates

Publication Date
2014-November-12
Document Type
Document Type
Abstract

Evolutionary robotics allows biologists to test hypotheses about extinct animals. In our case, we modeled some of the first vertebrates, jawless fishes, in order to study the evolution of the trait after which vertebrates are named: vertebrae. …

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