»romania«

A masterpiece in good science communications is presented by Christopher Schrader in Süddeutsche Zeitung (21.2.2006): He reports on orphans in Romania. Researchers did a field trial and investigated how the kids developed in orphanages and foster families. Actually, you could measure the development with a rule: in the orphanages (a relict by the Romanian dictator Ceauşescu) 17 year old children had the seize of 9 year olds. Well, in foster families they got much more attention, care and better food and thus caught up normal development. During the trial the kids improved in both groups. That's good news. Oh, and what makes the story a good science communications piece: Well, Christopher Schrader, although located in Munich with his paper, got notice on the issue at the AAAS conference in St. Louis, U.S.
Actually, European science issues have got more impact via the U.S.-link than via a direct exchange network in Europe.
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/wissen/artikel/595/70525/