Personal Blog
Rethinking Vitamin D
If you type "Vitamin D" into PubMed, you get more than 100,000 results. So this is a difficult question to answer, isn't it? Well, first of all, there's no way to live without Vitamin D. Vitamin D can be obtained from the diet and from exposure of the skin to sunlight. When the skin is exposed to the UV rays of sunlight, photolytic conversion of 7-dehydrocholesterol to Previtamin D3 occurs, followed by thermal isomerisation to Vitamin D3. But before we talk about Vitamin D and Vitamin D3 in particular, let's take a look at how Vitamin D was discovered...
Family Life in Ancient Greece
When Aristotle looked across the gulf that separated his city and Sparta he saw a puzzle. Spartan women owned a great share of land and spoke with striking confidence in public life. To him this was a symptom of disorder rather than a sign of balance. Read through the lens of his political theory Sparta was a constitution close to virtue yet bent out of shape by wealth and by the presence of women outside the quiet of the household. That judgement tells us as much about Athenian expectations as it does about the reality of Spartan life...
Writing Culture in Antiquity
Plato did not trust writing. In the Phaidros (Φαῖδρος) he lets a king warn that letters give the appearance of wisdom while weakening living memory. A written page cannot answer. It says the same thing to everyone whether they are ready for it or not. Yet Plato wrote dialogues that stage thinking as a living exchange. That tension opens a path into Homer...
Introduction to my master's thesis
Bacteria of the Acinetobacter genus have gained increasing attention in recent years. This is partly due to their potential to cause severe nosocomial infections. Additionally, their growing significance is attributed to the increasing discovery of isolates that are resistant to common antibiotics, making them difficult to treat. The success of A. baumannii, the most well-known representative of this genus, is largely due to its ability to acquire various genetic elements through horizontal gene transfer...
A confrontation with the absurd
At the centre of modern philosophy is the confrontation with human existence, the confrontation with the inevitability of death and the creation of individual structures of meaning. These themes are explored in detail by thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche. Their works offer deep insights into the human psyche, the complexity of social life and the challenges of the individual search for meaning...
Green tea and why you should drink it more
Green tea (Camellia sinesis) contains a variety of biologically active compounds, including catechins, which are powerful antioxidants. Catechins are a type of flavonoid, which is a diverse group of polyphenols. The numerous hydroxyl groups in the catechin molecules give them strong antioxidant properties...