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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Built for speed: strain in the cartilaginous vertebral columns of sharks

Publication Date
2014-February-01
Document Type
Document Type
Abstract

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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Society of the Culinary Spectacle: An Analysis of the Mediated Relationship Between Female Celebrity Chefs And the Kitchen

Publication Date
2015-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Department or Program
Document Type
Abstract

Gender remains a primary issue in the culinary, area, and a diachronic analysis of the portrayal of women in food media highlights the role that representation plays in both reinforcing and easing this divide. By examining the personas of Julia...

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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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The Poughkeepsie Farmers Market: Whiteness and the Logic of Food Access

Publication Date
2013-January-01
Document Type
Authors
Document Type
Abstract

The Poughkeepsie Farmers Market was the epitome of the Poughkeepsie Farm Project's mission to create a "just and sustainable food system in the Hudson Valley." While farm itself had been operating for many years prior to the program, it had...

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