If there is a peculiarity in the way of doing science and in the way of communicating science in Brazil, it is in the use of the idea of "deficit" in political and economic discourses, as well as in the discourses of socio-technical networks. Our proposal here is not to affirm or reject the existence of this deficit, but rather to understand its workings and its construction as a way of bringing about networks of interest that make use of this idea. For us, this is not an idea which is restricted to the discourse of researchers or of journalists and scientific broadcasters; there is also an echo in the general society, and in different spheres and situations. The idea of deficit with regard to scientific knowledge is functional in Brazil, in conjunction with the idea that the country itself has a deficiency in relation to developed countries. It is as if there were two levels of deficit which join together and empower each other.

The objective of the present paper is an attempt to measure the public understanding of science in the area of health and hygiene and test the efficacy of "cultural distance model". A pre-tested open-ended questionnaire was used for administering cross-sectional surveys at a religio-cultural festival in India. 3484 individuals were interviewed and responses were coded and entered to construct computer database. The data was used for determining the cultural distance of five scientific concepts from the quotidian life of the target population. In developing countries, the formal system of modern education operates as a strong determinant in shaping cultural structures of thoughts prevalent among the citizens. There exists a cultural distance between the scientific structure of configuring natural occurrences and peoples' complexity of thoughts. The distance varies significantly across the concepts that were subjected to the inspection and is a function of the nature of scientific information.

The international symposium Science on air: the role of radio in science communication was held in Trieste on 1 and 2 October, 2004. To our knowledge, it is the first conference ever specifically held on science in radio, and it is certainly the first time science radio journalists, researchers, and media experts from 16 different countries met to discuss their journalistic practice and the role of radio in science communication. The main results are presented in this section.

Contemporary radio is under-studied by academic researchers, while on the contrary it expresses great exigencies of knowledge. Media studies examined deeply radio when it was the mainstream medium, i.e. in the Thirties, especially in the US also for marketing needs of a largely commercial broadcasting system.

Can (and should) there be a "Mediterranean model" of science communication? For those of us who work in the field of science communication in a country which is on the Mediterranean Sea, this has always been a question that spontaneously leaps to mind. This is because we "feel" there is something intangible in our way of communicating science that is rather similar to the way of a French, Spanish (or even Brazilian) colleague of ours, whereas it is slightly different from that of an American or British one. And yet, the more in depth this question is studied in time, the more complex the answer becomes.

The Regional Park of the Po River Delta1 was set up in 1988 (it belongs to a Consortium of Public Bodies). It extends over 54,000 hectares of land and stretches across 45 km of the Italian Eastern coastline (45 km of the more than 90 km that go between the provinces of Ferrara and Ravenna)2 and is one of the largest and most significant natural parks in Italy.

Never have there been so much science and so much technology on so many sides as now. The expansion of scientific information in the social sphere is frankly impressive. In newspapers and movies, on television and radio, scientific ideas circulate freely every day of the week. Science is in cell phones, shampoo, compact discs, Olympic athletes' clothing, food, perfumes, and in so many places that trying to enumerate them would be insane. After all, why should it be particularly strange to speak of science and technology if scientific thought finally molds our deepest fibers? Today's society, developed or not, lives immersed in a scientific and technological culture which guides the course of the most fundamental events. Even though, of course, the common sense obliges us to admit that the majority of us are not fully conscious of its reach and consequences. Perhaps this helps to understand why we still feel a certain shame when, in a social gathering, we comment that our profession consists of spreading science or analyzing the ways in which it circulates and its repercussions in the public opinion. It may be that we live with the fear that someone will look at us strangely and with disbelief and ask us to explain what scientific communication or the social studies of science consist of or, worse yet, that we find ourselves in the embarrassing situation of rehearsing an answer to justify the importance of thinking about science in daily life.

The eighth convention of the PCST (Public Communication of Science and Technology) network, which took place in Barcelona this June, emphasised an increasing richness in reflection and practice with regard to several themes to do with science communication. This growing variety mirrors the different approaches gradually coming about in different cultural and geographical contexts. In particular, the Focus of this issue of JCOM concentrates on a presentation of the models of interpretation of science communication referring to the Mediterranean and South American cultural area.