NASA’s Mars rover collects rock sample ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’ - Related to will, rock, before’, detect, farms

KOA Biotech raises €2M for early disease detection for fish farms

Aquaculture production startup KOA Biotech raised €2 million in funding.

More than half of the fish consumed comes from aquaculture production. However, as highlighted by Sira Mogas, CEO and founder of KOA, “infections in fish farms are a growing problem, causing losses of up to 30 per cent of production (economically estimated globally at over $6 billion).”.

KOA was born as a spin-off of Pompeu Fabra University, based on its founder’s doctoral thesis.

The business aims to become a reference in the diagnosis and prevention of diseases in aquaculture, promoting sustainable practices and contributing to the global growth of this industry.

Using biotechnological tools, KOA Biotech has developed a biosensor system that, combined with proprietary algorithms, forms an autonomous device capable of early detection of waterborne infections.

This makes it possible to implement preventive measures in production systems to prevent the spread of infections in water, reducing mortality caused by infectious pathogens and the use of antibiotics in fish farms.

Swanlaab Innvierte Agrifood-Tech led the funding round, which included Fund-F and Faber.

, General Partner of Swanlaab Innvierte Agrifood-Tech:

“Investing in technological and innovative companies like KOA is key for the development and value creation based on the research conducted in this sector in Spain, as well as a lever for the development and differentiation of the country's agri-food sector, with a global impact.

This investment round will enable KOA not only to advance its technological development and consolidate its technology in the sector but also to implement its commercial plan.

Lead image: KOA Biotech. Photo: uncredited.

Norman likens the device to “an MRI machine tipped on its side and suspended above the user’s head.”.

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NASA’s Mars rover collects rock sample ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before’

NASA is getting excited about a special rock that its Perseverance rover has just scooped up from the surface of Mars.

“This sample is a one-of-a-kind treasure,” the space agency introduced, referring to a rock known to be abundant in low-calcium pyroxene (LCP). This makes it one of the most fascinating samples of the mission to date, as it was taken from the sole site along the planned route where this low-calcium pyroxene area was identified from orbit.

A post on Perseverance’s X account described the sample — named Silver Mountain by NASA — as “unlike anything we’ve seen before,” adding that it’s sealed the rock core in a sample tube that will be transported to Earth for analysis at a later date.

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Now that I've completed my climb out of Jezero Crater, I'm back to #SamplingMars! My 26th sample, known as "Silver Mountain," has textures unlike anything we've seen before. I've sealed the rock core in a sample tube so it can be analyzed in labs on Earth in the future. [website] — NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover (@NASAPersevere) January 29, 2025.

NASA called this particular sample collection “an essential milestone in our mission to uncover the geological history of Jezero Crater.”.

It also marks a return to full-time exploration by Perseverance after it spent the closing part of last year climbing up the side of Jezero Crater, which it’s been exploring since its dramatic landing there four years ago.

The six-wheeled rover took three-and-a-half months to complete the 1,640-feet (500- meter) climb, taking a few scheduled breaks along the way to carry out science observations as part of its ongoing search for signs of ancient microbial life on the distant planet.

NASA is currently considering the best way to carry out its Mars Sample Return mission, which will attempt to bring to Earth all of the material gathered by Perseverance during the course of its Mars mission. It’s a highly complex process, as it involves landing a spacecraft on the planet’s surface, collecting the deposited samples, transferring them to an orbiting spacecraft, and then getting them to Earth.

But a successful Mars Return Mission will allow scientists to study the Martian material in laboratory conditions, potentially revealing whether the red planet once harbored life, as well as telling us more about its geological history and evolution.

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Your smartwatch will soon be able to detect signs of heart failure

Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a condition that affects over five million Americans. For people over the age of 65, it is the most common diagnosis when they are hospitalized. One in nine deaths has heart failure as a contributing cause, as per Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Smartwatches might soon come to the rescue.

Experts at Tampere University have developed a new smartwatch-based method for detecting congestive heart rate failure. As part of a multi-disciplinary research that involved heart health and machine learning experts, the team created a real-time analysis method that works with smartwatches and heart rate monitors.

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Heart diseases usually follow a signature pattern of cardiac activity, and their careful analysis by an expert can help detect signs of serious problems. Take for example AFib detection, which looks for signs of irregular heartbeat rhythm using electrocardiogram (ECG) data.

The team is applying a similar tactic for diagnosing CHF in patients, relying on the insights gleaned from inter-beat or RR intervals. The RR interval is representative of the length of a ventricular cardiac cycle.

In the context of an electrocardiogram, it represents the time gap between two successive R-waves on an ECG graph. The team measured the accuracy of their method against a control set of healthy folks and people living with atrial fibrillation (AFib) problems.

As per the research paper that was , smartwatches can detect signs of congestive heart failure with impressive accuracy. The system is not only convenient and cost-effective, but can also help detect the onset of a serious cardiac problem and save lives.

“This approach highlights the potential of non-invasive, cost-efficient RRI analysis for early detection of CHF (congestive heart failure) and AF (atrial fibrillation),” concludes the research paper. As far as measurement accuracy goes, the method achieved 90% sensitivity and 92% specificity in detecting heart failure and AFib markers.

Last year, the same team developed a smartwatch-based computation method that can predict the risk of death from sudden cardiac arrest using a minute’s worth of heart rate measurement on a smartwatch.

“Our findings pave the way for the early detection of congestive heart failure using readily available equipment, eliminating the need for complex diagnostic procedures,” says Professor Jussi Hernesniemi, a cardiologist at Tays Heart Hospital.

The latest breakthrough is just the latest in a series of promising smartwatch-based research. In just a decade, smartwatches have transformed from digital companion devices to serious health-sensing powerhouses.

We already have smartwatches out there that measure blood pressure and look for signs of sleep apnea, while capabilities such as blood glucose monitoring are also on the horizon. Earlier this year, another research highlighted how smartwatch data can help accurately detect psychiatric illnesses and also trace their roots to a person’s unique genes.

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