Tag Archives: Seeds

This “explosive” squirting cucumber can launch seeds at nearly 30 mph!

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Researchers have uncovered an astonishing mechanism of seed dispersal in nature: the squirting cucumber.

This plant, Ecballium, boasts an extraordinary method of ejecting seeds over considerable distances, with a new study from Kiel University in Germany providing deeper insight into the process.

The mature squirting cucumber fruits are packed with thick liquid, creating significant internal pressure. When ripe, the stems disconnect, causing the fruit to forcefully discharge its seeds.

“This typically occurs when the fruit is fully mature and is disturbed,” Helengoge from Kiel University mentioned in BBC Science Focus.

“The plant aims to scatter its seeds as far as possible, which can propel them over 12 meters (39 feet) from the parent plant.”

Even minimal contact can trigger the fruit’s release, prompting Gorges’s team to utilize CT imaging to construct 3D models of the fruit without causing any damage.

Additionally, a high-speed camera captured the moment the cucumber expelled its seeds at speeds of up to 47 km/h (29 mph).

https://c02.purpledshub.com/uploads/sites/41/2025/07/squirtingCucumber3.mp4
The cucumber was recorded at 10,000 frames per second, showcasing the extraordinary force behind the seed ejection.

Gorge observed the maturation process of the fruits, noting that the stems straighten as the cucumber approaches readiness, ultimately hanging at a 52º angle just before bursting. The optimal angle for ballistic projection is theoretically 50º, making the cucumber nearly precise in its seed dispersal.

Like many plants, cucumbers aim to distribute their seeds widely to minimize competition for essential resources like light, water, and nutrients between parent and offspring plants.

While most plants have evolved to rely on wind, water, or animals for seed dispersal, squirting cucumbers have taken an active, ballistic approach.

The research team hopes their findings will inspire others to develop naturally derived solutions for future challenges.

“There are numerous applications in soft robotics, drug delivery systems, and similar technologies where efficient launching systems are needed,” Gorges stated.

https://c02.purpledshub.com/uploads/sites/41/2025/07/squirtingCucumberSlow5.mp4
Slight disturbances can cause ripe cucumbers to explode.

About the experts

Helen Gogges is a doctoral student specializing in functional morphology and biomechanics at Kiel University in Germany, focusing on optimizing plant mechanisms for seed distribution.

read more:

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Grape seeds dating back 60 million years found in Colombia

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Paleobotanists have described nine new species of the Vitaceae family. Vitaceae It is based on fossil seeds from four tropical palaeoflora sites, dating back 60 to 19 million years. Rithuva Susmani This new species, discovered in Colombia, is the oldest evidence of a Vitaceae plant in the Western Hemisphere.

Rithuva Susmani From the Paleocene of Colombia. Scale bar – 1 mm. Image courtesy of Herrera et al., doi: 10.1038/s41477-024-01717-9.

Soft tissues, like those of fruit, rarely preserve as fossils, so scientists often learn more about ancient fruits through their seeds, which fossilize more easily.

The oldest known grape seed fossils were found in India and date back to 66 million years ago.

“We always think about animals, we think about dinosaurs, because they were the ones most affected, but the extinction also had a big impact on plants,” said Dr. Fabianie Herrera, a paleobotanist at the Field Museum.

“The forest has reset itself and changed its plant composition.”

Dr Herrera and his colleagues hypothesize that the extinction of the dinosaurs may have prompted changes in the forests.

“Large animals like dinosaurs are known to alter the ecosystems around them,” said Dr. Monica Carvalho, a paleobotanist at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.

“We think that if large dinosaurs roamed the forests, they would likely have cut down trees and maintained more open forests than we have today.”

“But with no large dinosaurs around to cut down forests, some tropical forests, including those in South America, became densely wooded, with layers of trees forming an understory and a canopy.”

“These new dense forests provided an opportunity, and the fossil record shows that around this time we start to see an increase in plants that use vines to climb trees, like grapes,” Dr Herrera said.

“The diversification of birds and mammals in the years following the extinction may also have helped spread grape seeds.”

The researchers examined fossilized grape seeds from the 60-million-year-old Bogotá Formation in Colombia, the 41-million-year-old Tonosi Formation in Panama, the 28-million-year-old Máncora Formation in western Peru, and the 19-million-year-old Cucaracha Formation, exposed at the Gaillard Cut in the Panama Canal.

They were able to identify at least nine new species of the Vitaceae family, including: Rithuva SusmaniThis provides the oldest evidence of grapes in the Western Hemisphere.

“This new species is important as it confirms the South American origin of the group that includes the common grape vine. Grapes “It evolved,” says Dr Gregory Staal, a paleobotanist at the National Museum of Natural History.

“These are the oldest grapes ever found in this region, millions of years younger than the oldest found on the other side of the world,” Dr Herrera said.

“This discovery is important because it shows that grapes really started to spread around the world after the dinosaurs went extinct.”

The new species' place in the grapevine family tree indicates that its evolutionary journey has been a checkered one.

“The fossil record shows that grapevines are very resilient plants,” Dr Herrera said.

“They are an endangered group in the Latin American region, but they have been able to adapt and survive in other parts of the world.”

“Given the mass extinctions facing the Earth today, studies like this one are valuable in revealing patterns about how biodiversity crises will unfold.”

“But the other thing I like about these fossils is that these tiny, humble seeds can tell us a lot about forest evolution.”

of study Published in the journal Natural plants.

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F. Herrera othersCenozoic Vitaceae seeds reveal a long history of extinction and dispersal in the Neotropics. Natural plantsPublished online July 1, 2024; doi: 10.1038/s41477-024-01717-9

Source: www.sci.news

Labrys Technologies Cultivates Versatile Seeds for Humanitarian and Military Applications

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When Hellsing raised $223 million in a Series B round, the tech industry saw it as continued confirmation that defense is definitely back on the investment agenda.

Further confirmation came today in the form of a $5.5 million seed round for the British defense technology startup, in news shared exclusively with TechCrunch. Labris Technologies, led by Germany’s Project A Ventures. MD One Ventures, Marque VC, Offset Ventures and Expeditions Fund also participated. The funding will be used to expand the development and research and development team, as well as strengthen the commercial sales team.

Labrys is perhaps best described as a service that blends Slack, location, and payments for both military and humanitarian scenarios. This may seem a bit tedious, but it starts to make more sense when you look at the problem the product is intended to solve.

WhatsApp is commonly used in fast-moving situations like humanitarian crises. And although I declare some interest in this subject, I have personal experience with this. Since 2015, when I founded the nonprofit Techfugees, we found that refugees and humanitarian workers almost always use WhatsApp to coordinate their responses. It was simple, worked even on bad networks, was fast, and could reveal my location. However, its limitations are all too obvious. How do you know you’re dealing with a legitimate humanitarian worker? What if they don’t reveal their location? How can we provide them with resources and money? These are important questions to solve.

Co-founder and CEO August Larsten said in an interview: In some cases, it can be very difficult to actually verify and see who the person on the other end of the phone is actually talking to. And you can’t integrate all these different chats into something called a network coordination tree. If he wants to talk to 133 people in Indonesia, he doesn’t necessarily want 133 individual communications. ”

Therefore, the Labrys client displays on-screen dashboards that allow users of apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams to send messages to entire teams or individuals, and see where they are. And you can (fashionably) pay for it.

Labrys Technologies mobile platform. Image credits: Labris Technologies

The veteran-owned startup’s platform effectively “scratched an itch” that the founders discovered through their own work “on the ground.” Mr Larsten is a former Royal Marine Special Forces officer who led teams across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Luke Wattam (Co-Founder and COO) has worked across the UK Ministry of Defence, the FCDO and the UK’s Allies.

The Labrys platform, Axiom C2 and Axiom Communicator, enables KYC/E verification, encrypted communications, task management, and geographic location of individual users. Finally, it also encompasses digital payments via crypto stablecoins. In other words, you know who you’re dealing with, where they are located, and how you can pay them. This is especially important when dealing with humanitarian disasters.

Larsten said to me: “I see people through a geospatial interface. Having that interface differentiates me from communication channels like WhatsApp or Slack. The second element is that no matter where they are in Afghanistan, for example, those And we want to pay our employees, all through the same interface in USD stablecoins.”

Labrys claims the platform has already proven its value in the field.

It was used in Afghanistan to help evacuate 5,000 persecuted Afghan minorities, as well as by the Ukrainian National Emergency Service during the Kakhovka Dam collapse.

Mykola Taranenko, commander of the Kherson regional emergency response team of the Ukrainian Red Cross (also a Labrys customer), told TechCrunch in an email: High-risk environments like Ukraine. With the help of Axiom, you can securely monitor your team’s location and status, manage donations, quickly translate digital payments into real-world impact, and purchase equipment locally. [and] Donors can see where their money went. ”

Labrys operates in a unique environment where many civilian and military solutions overlap. for example, everbridge is an enterprise software solution that provides users (often military or NGOs) with an understanding of global flashpoints. However, unlike Labrys, it does not have the equipment to connect with humans “on the ground” so to speak. Another of his TAKs is known as the “Blue Force” tracking system. meanwhile, Premises datahas raised $146 million and has a software platform for humanitarian organizations that provides analytics on assets on the ground.

This latest funding is one of the largest seed rounds ever for a European defense tech startup and symbolizes that defense is no longer off-limits for investors, as we saw this year at TechCrunch Disrupt. ing.

Additionally, “dual-use” products that coordinate either civilian or military teams are a growing market. As of 2022, the global command and control systems market will be Estimation Its size is $22 billion and is expected to reach $28 billion by 2028.

Meanwhile, Improbable, EclecticIQ, Living Optics, and Preligens are all European companies that have raised tens of millions of dollars, and in some cases more, in the past year or so.

The news reflects an established trend from last year, when venture capital-backed companies injected $7 billion into U.S. aerospace and defense companies.

Source: techcrunch.com