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.

An illness in Crisis: The Subtleties That Led To The PACE Trial And Its Impact On ME/CFS

Publication Date
2023-April-24
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Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a contested illness with no diagnosis. Treatment typically consists of symptom management. This spurred interest in finding ways to help patients with ME/CFS to find new ways of improving and helping them recover. The...

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

Publication Date
2016-July-07
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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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Built for speed: strain in the cartilaginous vertebral columns of sharks

Publication Date
2014-February-01
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In most bony fishes vertebral column strain during locomotion is almost exclusively in the intervertebral joints, and when these joints move there is the potential to store and release strain energy. Since cartilaginous fishes have poorly mineralized vertebral centra, we...

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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
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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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