Gimara - fine art, photography, scientific illustrations

Aim of the show:
To provide fuel for curious minds.
The Curiosity Show takes a very light-hearted, simple and fun look at curious theories, experiments and some of the intriguing minds behind them.

This show discusses information from mainly secondary sources to promote and to encourage thinking. It is an interpretation of science for a general audience. Therefore, there maybe alternative viewpoints/opinions and some degree of oversimplification of ideas. At the end of the day, you just have to ask yourself, "What do you believe?"

Digital Art By artist Gimara Duncan

A little about the presenter
The Curiosity Show's Gimara has been presenting the programme since 19th Sep 2008. Gimara received a 1st Class Honours and a degree in Applied Science. She also works as an artist - gimara.com.

Music Contributor & Sage
The marvellous Dave Haworth.

Socialisation & co-operation (11/07/10)

"Hey you! don't tell me there's no hope at all, Together we stand, divided we fall" - Hey You, Pink Floyd

On today's programme we lightly explore the process of socialisation by looking at cooperation in the simpliest of life forms, bacteria. Socialisation is very simply the process where we as individuals learn how to behave in order to fit into our surrounding society, which requires a certain degree of cooperation (willing or unwilling).

Some bacteria are single celled creatures whereas we humans are made up of multiple cells. However, just because bacteria are single doesn't mean they aren't social. An example of this social behaviour is seen in starving myxobacteria. Here you can see tens of thousands of single celled creatures forming fruiting bodies, when starved. Find out more on the show.

Events in South Yorkshire (16/3/10)

Event:                     Superheros wanted for 3K fun run
Date and Time:        Sunday 25th April
Place:                      Don Valley Stadium
Contact:                   0114 230 8429

Fun Run Sheffield Wildlife Trust

Genomics (23/2/10)

Genomes are essentially all our blueprints (even if we don't apparently use them), which are passed down from our ancestors. Genomes are the instructions manuals of life and with the exception of viruses (which aren't considered to be alive) are made up DNA. All humans are ~99.9% genetic similar and we share ~98% similarity to some chimps. So where does all our diversity come from and what information can are genomes tell us about human history? Find out more on the show...

Do you want to compare real human blueprints ( DNA sequences) to blueprints of other animals? Then check this link out: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=omim.

Be an astronaut from the comfort of your own home (16/2/10)

GalaxyZooII
SETI quest
Be A Martian (NASA)
HiWish (NASA)
SkyWatch (NASA)

Top Science Songs (13/2/10)

Below is a list of some of my favourite science songs
(inc. those with 'loose' refs), in no particular order.

Bunsen Burner by John Ottway
Still Ill by the Smiths
Alexandar Grahame Bell by the Sweet
E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite
Chemical World by Blur
Electricity by Suede
Atomic by Blondie
Genetic Engineering by OMD
Chain Reaction by Diana Ross
Nine Million Bicycles by Katie Melua
Bicycle by Queen
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Dirty Water by Standells
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Treat Yo Mama by John Butler Trio
Gozilla by Blue Oyster Cult
Live Wire by ACDC
Satellite of Love by U2
St James Infirmary by Louie Armstrong/White Stripes
I Think Its Going To Rain Today by Nina Simone
May The Sunshine by the Nazareths
Blame it on the Boogie by the Jackson 5
Rip Rip Woodchip by John Williamson
Blue Sky Mining by Midnight Oil
Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil
I am Scientist by the Dandy Warhols
She Blinded Me with Science by Thomas Dolby
Amos Moses by Terry Reed
Apeman by the Kinks
Skeleton Song by Kate Nash
Weird Science by Oingo Bongo

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Events in South Yorkshire (9/2/10)

Event:                     Fantastic Footprints, Identification and craft event
Date and Time:        Friday 19th February 2010. 1pm – 3pm
Place:                      Crabtree Ponds Nature Reserve, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S5 7AQ

Event:                     Home Sweet Home, National Nest Box Week event
Date and Time:        Wednesday 17th February 2010. 1pm – 3pm
Place:                      Sunnybank Nature Reserve, Sunnybank Crescent, South Yorkshire, SK11 8JD

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Oil solves maze (25/1/10)

Check out this pac-man like game of a pink droplet of oil solving a maze. The maze consists of a basic liquid solution (imagine drano or baking soda mixed in with water). At one end of the container a big chunk of of acid soaked gel (imagine half a lemon) is placed. Then ~40 sec later the pink droplet of oil you see in the movie below is added. The pink droplet of oil is actually acidic (imagine someone has added touch of lemon juice and pink food dye to a droplet of olive oil). Within seconds the oil has solved the maze. How?? The droplet of oil leaches the acid into the basic solution it is sitting in and the theory is that because the drop of oil is sitting in a pH gradient (imagine a tray filled with water - then add a lemon slice to one end - if stick your finger and taste the water solution near the lemon slice and then compare it the water at the end opposite to the lemon slice, the furtherest end should taste less lemony/acidic than the end with the lemon - resulting in a 'lemon' gradient). This pH gradient causes the pink acidic oil droplet to lose its own acid unevenly, changing the surface tension of the oil, making the oil drop self propellant.

It certainly challenges our concept of intelligence and I find myself wondering just how much of maze solving is down to a physical response to environmental interactions rather than the little grey cells.

Slime mould shows intelligence (19/1/10)

Never would I have associated slime mould with mazes unless it was growing in on a rotten log
let alone to even consider that slime mould would possess the 'intelligence' to solve a maze.
Yet, as incredible as it seems a certain variety of slime mould has not only been able to conquer a maze. The slime mould has achieved this great feat using the shortest route! However, can this be considered 'intelligence'? It would be interesting to watch a time lapse video of the slime mould solving the below maze in the picture below. As one can easily see the slime mould did make some detours but it is rather interesting that the mould did not simply spread itself to cover the entire maze to reach its objective.

Click on above picture for source info.

The AG symbols represent 'food' and the 'exits/entrances' to the maze.

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Ever wanted an invisibility cloak? (12/1/10)
Well, theoretically its possible with nanotechnology (check out article).

What's nanotechnology?
Lets first take a look at what a nanometer is. A nanometer is a unit of measure like miles or metres. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. A human hair is roughly about a 100, 000 nanometers wide. Thus to see something only a few nano-meters wide, we would need a super-dooper microscope like an atomic force microscope… which sounds pretty impressive!

Anyhow, nanotechnology or"nanotech", involves understanding and control of matter between ~ 1 and 100 nanometers (at an atomic/molecular level). Does that mean nanotechnology is looking at stuff smaller than an atom? Well diameters of atoms lie in the vicinity of ~0.1 nanometer (It important to note the sizes of individual atoms do vary but not by much). Check out this wacky nano song:

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What are stem cells?? (5/1/10)

"Imagine a blob of goo capable of morphing into a werewolf or a purple bunny rabbit"

Stem cells are unspecialised cells that have to potential to become specialised e.g blood cell, nerve cell, muscle cell. They are able to 'replicate' (divide and multiply) themselves whereas specialised cells such as nerve cells rarely do.