Recent reports and surveys indicate that Europe may face severe e-skills shortages and mismatches in the coming years. At the same time, e-skills are becoming central to boost innovation, productivity and employability and to respond to global challenges. To this end, the European Commission proposes today a long-term e-skills agenda and a set of action lines at EU level following extensive expert group and stakeholder consultations. These actions will complement and enrich significant efforts already under way in Europe.

The Health-EU Portal started issuing last week a multilingual newsletter, which aims to better inform European citizens on what is going on in the field of health at European and international level. "In 2006 we launched the Public Health Portal to provide high-quality, user-friendly information on health to citizens. Building on this, the Health-EU newsletter will allow readers to receive the latest news and developments on health from a range of sources across Europe in all European languages," Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou remarks in the newsletter's inaugural edition.

Starting in August 2007 the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment is funding Transinsight GmbH's research project GO3R. This project focuses on the development of a knowledge-based search engine for alternative methods to animal experiments. Transinsight is closely collaborating with scientists from the Centre for Documentation and Evaluation of Alternatives to Animal Experiments (ZEBET).

health2.info is a Web 2.0 Health Information and news interchange and publication tool for Health professionals. The objective is to provide information about Healthcare relevant stories that users found around the internet.

health2.info whishes to establish a social web (web 2.0) about Healthcare on different health interests groups (management, technology, public health, medical research, etc.), where there is a lot of knowledgement, news and interesting projects but mostly of them are dispersed all around.

Sensors can monitor production processes, unmask tiny cracks in aircraft hulls, and determine the amount of laundry in a washing machine. In future, they will also be used in the human body and raise the alarm in the event of high pressure in the eye, bladder or brain.

If the pressure in the eye is too high, nerve fibers die, resulting in visual field loss or blindness. Since increased intraocular pressure, also known as glaucoma, is not usually painful, the condition is often diagnosed too late.

Scientists in Spain have achieved a giant leap for robotkind by building the first artificial cerebellum to help them interact with humans. The cerebellum is the portion of the brain that controls motor functions.

The project will now implant the man-made cerebellum into a robot so as to make its movements and interaction with humans more natural.

"SMEs go Health" is an initiative designed to support Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) and academic researchers interested in research cooperation and participation in the 7th EU Framework Programme (FP7), particularly in the Health-related area. An information and training event takes place on the 13th of September 2007 at the occasion of the "Baltic Dynamics" in Riga, Latvia.

The objective of "SMEs go Health" is to raise the number and quality of involvement of SMEs and SME groupings in Health related projects of FP7.