Ayyuce Demirbas

“Everything is made of invisible particles.
The elementary particles of matter—“the seeds of the things”—are eternal.
The elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
All particles are in motion in an infinite void.
The universe has no creator or designer.
Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve.
The swerve is the source of free will.
Nature ceaselessly experiments.
The universe was not created for or about humans.
Humans are not unique.
Human society began not in a Golden Age of tranquility and plenty, but in a primitive battle for survival.
The soul dies.
There is no afterlife.
Death is nothing to us.
All organized religions are superstitious delusions.
Religions are invariably cruel.
There are no angels, demons, or ghosts.
The highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.
The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.”
― Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

“It begins with the siRNA binding to a collection of proteins called the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). The RISC uses the siRNA as a template to search out matching mRNAs in the cell and degrade them. This serves both as a mechanism for regulating gene expression and as a defense against viruses. It also is a powerful tool for biology and medicine. It lets you temporarily “turn off” any gene you want. You can use it to treat a disease, or to study what happens when a gene is disabled. Just identify the mRNA you want to block, select any short segment of it, and create a siRNA molecule with the complementary sequence.”
― Bharath Ramsundar, Deep Learning for the Life Sciences: Applying Deep Learning to Genomics, Microscopy, Drug Discovery, and More

“Zu den vielen Widersprüchlichkeiten des deutschen Nürnberg-Diskurses zählt daher, dass viele Deutsche zwar nach Kriegsende behaupteten, durch die Prozesse erstmals von den Gräueltaten an den Juden und anderen Minderheiten erfahren zu haben, an dererseits jedoch mit derselben Vehemenz versichert wurde, die Gerichtsverhandlung habe nichts zu Tage gefördert, was nicht schon vorher bekannt gewesen sei.”
― Annette Weinke, Die Nürnberger Prozesse

“Proteins often bind to small molecules. Sometimes that binding behavior is central to the protein’s function: the main role for a given protein can involve binding to particular molecules. For example, signaling transduction in cells often passes messages via the mechanism of a protein binding to another molecule. Other times, the molecule binding to the protein is foreign: possibly a drug we’ve created to manipulate the protein, possibly a toxin that interferes with its function.”
― Bharath Ramsundar, Deep Learning for the Life Sciences: Applying Deep Learning to Genomics, Microscopy, Drug Discovery, and More