The entry in the Oxford English Dictionary for curious has two citations which include curious of. Both are given under obsolete definitions. The British National Corpus has no records showing curious of followed by the kind of construction seen in your example. We can conclude that it has no role in normal contemporary English.
If you try to do something, you make an attempt to do that something.
The use of the word 'try' followed by a to- infinitive suggests that you are not sure whether you will succeed in a future attempt: I am trying to open the window. I will try to open the window.
It suggests you did not succeed in a past attempt: I tried to open the window.
If you try doing something, you actually do it. The use of the word 'try' followed by a gerund suggests that you are want to see if the result of what you do will have some effect: The room is very stuffy; I will try opening the window (to see if that helps).
'Can you ...?' introducing a request to somebody to try to do / try doing something does not change the meanings of the try constructions.
Can you try to open the window? This is request to somebody to make the attempt to open the window. The speaker is not sure whether the person addressed will succeed. It is possible that somebody else has already tried, and failed.
Can you try opening the window? This is a request to somebody to open the window. The speaker hopes that the opening of the window will have some effect, such as letting some fresh air into a stuffy room.
Best Answer
It is a subtle difference. The word "take" is used in these sentences to mean taking ownership or taking responsibility. To take something and then do something to it implies that the taker has done the action intentionally, or is at least directly responsible for the outcome.
For example, it is possible to transform a place by simply being there, or by passing through, but to take a place and transform it suggests that something deliberate has been done in order to affect that transformation.
It gets a bit more complicated with non-living subjects such as Alcohol and The Internet, but the principle is the same:
The sentence "Alcohol destroyed my life" can be interpreted to mean: [The use of] alcohol destroyed my life. or Alcohol [abuse] destroyed my life, both of which leave the responsibility with the drinker.
The sentence "Alcohol took my life and destroyed it" explicitly personifies the alcohol (by making it the taker) and then assigns blame to it.