The walled garden at Gordon Castle in Fochabers produces fresh seasonal food for a thriving restaurant and cut flowers for florists, as well as healthy, home-grown fruit and vegetables for the local community. Head gardener Ed Bollom describes the challenges the team faced in creating one of the largest kitchen gardens in Britain and in growing produce in the North of Scotland.
Among the population of Selangor, in the west of peninsular Malaysia, are an indigenous coastal group, the Btsisi’. There are just 3,000 of them, sharing their coastal homeland with the largest port in the country, on an international waterway – and yet, says Dr Jarina Mohd Jani of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu who has been collaborating with them in research, they show considerable resilience in conserving their marine environment and their own culture and have lessons for us.
See the robots – and learn how to control them. Meet the superheroes and fly through space with them in virtual reality. Create constellations. Enter the strange and beautiful world of fractals. Hear the sounds of whales and dolphins, learn about bats – and build a model microorganism. Sit your driver exam with a remote-control toy bus. Experiment with model wind turbines, and try out electronic circuit boards ... and much much more!
Come along to help a group of mathematicians to realise a vision! They want to show in a highly visual way one of the fundamental structures in the world of numbers – the nature of prime numbers. They are going to use cardboard boxes to build up blocks and towers of numbers, like buildings in a city – and they need you to help them!
Join the director of the Ness of Brodgar excavations, Nick Card, for an off-season walk around the site where 20 years of excavation have just been completed. Hear about the wider landscape around the Ness and the news from this year’s dig, along with some of the particularly interesting finds.
Come along with friends and family to see the equipment and the people who operate it. The depot has a map of Orkney’s electricity network, plus activities and careers information. Everyone welcome.
Recent decades have seen dramatically increased rates of conditions affecting the brain, from neurodivergence among younger people to earlier deterioration amongst older people. We've also seen a radical change in diet. Is there a connection? Yes, says Ann Roberts, of the charity Think Through Nutrition. Research from many sources includes work on improving diet in prisons.
Coral reefs, “the rainforests of the sea”, are in decline, says Dr Siti NurTahirah Jaafar of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. Rising sea temperatures cause corals to expel the algae living in their tissues. They turn white and become more disease-susceptible. But few people see the silent struggle.
Ancient middens provide vital clues to archaeologists about the people who left the material behind. You can see the process of deduction by looking through – (clean!) – modern rubbish, and noting clues it provides to the people who dumped it. Call in and try your own powers of deduction, and learn about the importance of middens, and how to think like an archaeologist.
Meet friends old or new and enjoy the best of Orkney cheese, meat, fish and baking. The One O’Clock Toast today is in memory of engineer James Andrew Liddle from St Ola who installed electric light in Stromness and Bo’ness. It is given by Patricia Long.
It’s a great sight on Broad Street in front of the Cathedral, with an opportunity to see cars that can range in time from early days to a new electric vehicle of today – and with over a hundred years of vintage vehicles, classic cars and tractors in between, along with the sound of engines in action, and all beautifully restored.
The NHS's wealth of information about our health enables national patterns to be drawn about our chances of illnesses. But there are big challenges in bringing together NHS data from different sources. Health data researcher Prof. Cathie Sudlow discusses with Anna Woolman, joined by Chris Monk with first-hand experience of data and diagnosis.
Three researchers from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu - Dr Tan Chung Hong, Dr Yusri Yusuf and Dr Muhammad Hafiz Borkhanuddin - describe a beautiful underwater world, vibrantly alive. They tell the story of the living corals that build the reefs, and their spawning, often synchronised with the lunar cycle; and they describe the highly diverse and colourful fishes who make the reefs their home, and the equally colourful nudibranchs, shell-less snails of the sea, and citizen science projects to map their distribution.
Greetings Earthlings big and small, especially in the isles,
My spaceship’s heading Earthwards in September, full of smiles,
I've stocked it up with lots of songs, and lots of lunar glee
And so on Saturday the 7th I hope you’ll come and see
And listen for my spaceship’s sound, the well-known whee-whee-zoom -
And gather round about to sing and dance with Mr Boom!
Could super-humans such as Captain Marvel or Superman, and qualities such as super-strength, actually exist in reality? Could super-suits of armour be made, like Batman’s body shield or Iron Man’s AI human-interface body? And what are the chances of there being, on some far planet, alien life – and if so, how could we ever make contact, or navigate our way there?
Some people live and thrive despite harbouring what for others are lethal mutations. Their protection comes from further genetic mutations. Dr Stephen Friend, who led the team that cloned the first human cancer susceptibility gene, describes the search for ‘genetic heroes’ whose special genetic abilities may give clues towards new ways to tackle diseases.
Kirkwall City Pipe Band with their final parade of the season.
The remarkable untold story of electronic music's female pioneers. Narrated by Laurie Anderson, the film maps a new history of electronic music through the visionary women whose radical experimentations with machines redefined the boundaries of music. Featuring Clara Rockmore, Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel, Pauline Oliveros, Delia Derbyshire, Daphne Oram, Éliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher and Bebe Barron.
See a head mysteriously grow and shrink and a coin pass through a solid rubber sheet. Watch water vanish and defy gravity, and observe metals bend using the power of the mind. Dr Adrian Allan from Dornoch Academy with a family magic show with science behind every trick. For age 10 and upwards.
Not so long ago the Clyde Valley was the fruit basket of Scotland. The Lanarkshire Songwriters have gathered memories from growers and pickers of those great days, and turned them into songs with schools and members of the community. Three of them, Billy Stewart, John Young and Wilf Yule, tell the story in words and music, with help from Andy Munro and local musicians.