How the French national authority for health assesses medicines for use in pediatrics.

Children deserve to be treated with appropriate medicines based on robust assessments. Despite the introduction of new regulations, the availability of medicines for children is suboptimal because of the frequent lack of relevant clinical trials due to the difficulty of conducting such trials. Thus, the Transparency Committee (TC) of the French National Authority for Health, who oversees the assessment of medicinal products in France, set up a pediatric working group with two aims: (1) The first aim was to review all opinions on medicines for pediatric use.

UAF radiorespirometric protocol for assessing hydrocarbon mineralization potential in environmental samples.

Following the EXXON Valdez oil spill, a radiorespirometric protocol was developed at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) to assess the potential for microorganisms in coastal waters and sediments to degrade hydrocarbons. The use of bioremediation to assist in oil spill cleanup operations required microbial bioassays to establish that addition of nitrogen and phosphorus would enhance biodegradation. A technique assessing 1-14C-n-hexadecane mineralization in seawater or nutrient rich sediment suspensions was used for both of these measurements.