S: is for the social consciousness of science

Its not every day you meet someone who's wearing a dopamine necklace, but then it's not every day you meet someone like Dr Lizzie Burns. She's a scientist, artist and maker of jewelery. Can you guess what this painting is? Its a new HIV Vaccine by artist Dr. Lizzie Burns. Inspired by the research team at the University of Oxford’s Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. Scientists are testing a new kind of HIV vaccine based on DNA. Containing small sections of HIV genes designed to provoke a strong immune reaction as well as dead pox viruses to boost the immune response. The vaccine of DNA-bearing particles(gold/purple) are fired through the cell surface by compressed helium, along with inactivated pox viruses (purple balls), to boost the immune response. The white blood cell is given growth messages (pink) while the vaccinated cell is sentenced to death (black).

Lizzie wanted to show the similarities between men and women. In both cases the development of our reproductive systems is triggered by the release of a single hormone (GnRH) from the base of our brains which in turn release further hormones (FSH and LH). These hormones act on the gonads (pale green) to stimulate secretion of sex hormone: testosterone from men’s testes and estrogen from women’s ovaries. These superimposed outlines of the two models (Burns and her partner) show how sex hormones influence male and female characteristics. It makes learning science so much more interesting when you can relate it to an artist rendering that breaks it down to color.
This is a blood clot. Children are Lizzie's real target she is determined to cross the boundary between art and science. When she peered into the secret beauty of the cancerous cells a laboratory in Oxford, she decided to paint them."It's an irony that cancerous growth looks so fascinating under the microscope with the birth of each new cell."It is a F.A.C.T. that the things that can kill us can be scary but through this kind of inspiration we can be encouraged to learn the F.A.C.T.S. and improve the quality of life.