College of Sciences

The legendary ability of cats to fall back on their paws could one day help humans walk better after a spinal cord injury, according to research done at the Université de Sherbrooke. The knowledge could also help seniors whose sense of balance is more precarious. In collaboration with researchers from Georgia Tech and Drexel, the Sherbrooke researchers wanted to better understand how what science calls a somatosensory return allows a cat to coordinate the movement of its four legs. Boris Prilutsky, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences, collaborated on the research.

An unprecedented wave of minor earthquakes focused near Elgin, a small town in Kershaw County in South Carolina, have local residents struggling to describe what they’re experiencing. For a big chunk of 2022, “Did you feel that?” became almost as common a greeting as “How are you?” across the Midlands. The U.S. Geological Survey refers to the Elgin phenomenon as a “swarm.” It began Dec. 27, 2021, with a magnitude 3.3 earthquake. Since then, upward of 80 earthquakes have been recorded. Zhigang Peng, a professor of geophysics in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, says magma or fluid movement can cause quakes, but scientists haven't found evidence of those with the Elgin swarm.