In today's Good News, a simple blood test used in conjunction with specialized AI technology may soon be the key to diagnosing ovarian cancer in its earlier stages. And in Papua New Guinea, a rare shark species last seen in the 1970s made a surprise appearance near the Gogol River.

Catherine Garcia
The Week Digital

After learning how to snowboard and running the Boston Marathon, blind athlete Kristie Colton is now training to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. The California resident was diagnosed with degenerative blindness as a child. With her friend Jungyeon Park, Colton founded the nonprofit Vorden Initiative to teach sighted individuals ways they can assist visually impaired people. Park and another friend, Grace Eysenbach, will serve as her guides up Kilimanjaro, a "really once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Colton told the Los Angeles Times.

A blood test used alongside a trained algorithm could eventually help diagnose ovarian cancer, a disease hard to detect in its early stages due to generalized symptoms like abdominal bloating and pain. The test, developed by AOA Dx, looks for certain lipids and proteins in the bloodstream whose combination is "like a biological fingerprint for ovarian cancer," said The Guardian. In a University of Colorado study, the test was 93% accurate across all stages of ovarian cancer and 91% accurate in early stages.

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One of the world's rarest sharks, the sailback houndshark, was spotted for the first time in 50 years off the shores of Papua New Guinea. Scientists thought the species went extinct due to overfishing, but six of the sharks were observed by fishermen near the Gogol River in 2020 and 2022, researchers said in a newly published study in the Journal of Fish Biology. It is now believed the species likely only lives around Papua New Guinea's Astrolabe Bay.

Mexico's jaguar population has grown to 5,326, up from 4,100 in 2010, according to the latest census by the National Alliance for Jaguar Conservation. This "extraordinary" increase is due primarily to larger protected areas that give the animals more room to roam, said lead researcher Gerardo Ceballos. Still, jaguars remain at risk of becoming extinct, and conservationists say more progress needs to be made against habitat loss, rancher conflicts and poaching.

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