Vassar Scholarship

Over one weekend at the beginning of October 2019, Eliud Kipchoge's sub-two-hour marathon in the INEOS 1:59 Challenge and Brigid Kosgei's world-record-breaking Chicago Marathon win reset the clock in terms of what was believed to be humanly possible in the...

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….

This thesis explores the success of Beyoncé's self-titled album in relation to the idea of originality within music. As members of the public, we assume that what sets superstars apart from novice musicians is an element of originality. However, more...

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...

Climate conditions in the Weddell Sea during the Pleistocene can be inferred by examining the abundance of foraminifer species and mineral fragments in ocean sediment cores. In particular, Neogloboquadrina incompta is a useful temperature proxy, and the abundance of terrigenous...

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. …