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The COVID-19 pandemic was immediately marked by strong clinical research activity. The French national competent authority presents the data on request for authorization during the first 2 years of COVID-19 pandemic to inform discussions on future clinical research issues. Applications for authorization of interventional COVID-19 trials submitted between March 2020 and February 2022 were analysed. Trials on medicinal products were classified according to market authorization status, mechanism of action of the investigational product, target population and clinical context. In 2 years, 208 clinical trials were submitted. 75% were authorized, 3% refused, 22% withdrawn by the sponsor. Among medicinal products trials, 6% were adaptative, 28% included outpatients and 2% were focused on post COVID-19 symptoms. Vaccines were evaluated in 9% of trials, antivirals in 38% and immunomodulators in 35%; 63% of antiviral and 60% of immunomodulation trials included a drug with a marketing authorization in another indication. The dynamics of authorization prove the involvement of stakeholders but also illustrates the risk of dispersion of research efforts and the risk of decorrelation between trials and the epidemic evolution. The high rate of withdrawal of applications could be explained by changes in the sanitary context and by the dropping of some therapeutic approaches. Most of clinical trials evaluate drugs authorized in another indication and assessment procedures by authorities have to mitigate between the knowledge of safety profile of those drugs and the uncertainty in a new clinical context with rapidly evolving knowledge. COVID-19 experience should now support future evolution in clinical research practices.

\"In Federalism and Subsidiarity, a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law, and philosophy address the application and interaction of the concept of federalism within law and government. What are the best justifications for and conceptions of federalism? What are the most useful criteria for deciding what powers should be allocated to national governments and what powers reserved to state or provincial governments? What are the implications of the principle of subsidiarity for such questions? What should be the constitutional standing of cities in federations? Do we need to \"remap\" federalism to reckon with the emergence of translocal and transnational organizations with porous boundaries that are not reflected in traditional jurisdictional conceptions? Examining these questions and more, this latest installation in the NOMOS series sheds new light on the allocation of power within federations\"-- Provided by publisher.

InFederalism and Subsidiarity,a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law, and philosophy address the application and interaction of the concept of federalism within law and government. What are the best justifications for and conceptions of federalism? What are the most useful criteria for deciding what powers should be allocated to national governments and what powers reserved to state or provincial governments? What are the implications of the principle of subsidiarity for such questions? What should be the constitutional standing of cities in federations? Do we need to remap federalism to reckon with the emergence of translocal and transnational organizations with porous boundaries that are not reflected in traditional jurisdictional conceptions? Examining these questions and more, this latest installation in the NOMOS series sheds new light on the allocation of power within federations.

To ensure safety and efficacy, cosmetic products are regulated and controlled worldwide. However, the regulatory approaches of each country may be significantly different and impact the competitiveness and economic viability of the industry. This work presents an updated review and comparison of regulatory requirements from the European Union, United States of America, Canada, Japan, People’s Republic of China and Brazil. It outlines contents such as the definition, classification and categorization of cosmetics, pre-market requirements, ingredients management, general labelling requirements, regulation of claims concerning advertisement and commercial practices, increase of animal testing and marketing bans on cosmetic products. Furthermore, it weighs the impact of regulatory differences on the safety and accessibility of these products in the mentioned regions.

As compared with Europe, the United States generally requires more rigorous clinical testing of high-risk devices, which delays patients' access to new devices but may provide better assurance of device safety. Millions of patients worldwide depend on an ever-widening array of medical devices for the diagnosis and management of disease. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires manufacturers of high-risk devices such as heart valves and intraocular lens implants to demonstrate safety and effectiveness before the devices can be marketed. However, some policymakers and device manufacturers have characterized U.S. device regulation as slow, risk-averse, and expensive. 1 , 2 Other experts, such as those at the Institute of Medicine, have suggested that current premarketing procedures may not be comprehensive enough and may be particularly dangerous for devices that have . . .

Mathematical ability: safety in numbers The 'approximate number system' (ANS) is a rough-and-ready number sense that has been demonstrated in societies that have no verbal counting system, in human infants and even in monkeys. A new study reveals that a gift for more elaborate mathematics might also be linked to this evolutionarily ancient ability. Mathematically talented children, aged around 14 years, were found to perform ANS tasks more precisely than those less good with numbers, regardless of IQ or visual-spatial reasoning skills. This raises the question of whether a better background in mathematics has promoted better care at ANS tasks in those children, or whether early coaching in ANS might improve mathematical prowess. The 'Approximate number system' (ANS), a relatively imprecise discrimination of quantities and numbers, has been demonstrated in cultures with no verbal counting system and even in various non-human species. Children with higher symbolic math abilities also do ANS tasks more precisely, and do this regardless of their general verbal IQ or visual–spatial reasoning skills. Human mathematical competence emerges from two representational systems. Competence in some domains of mathematics, such as calculus, relies on symbolic representations that are unique to humans who have undergone explicit teaching 1 , 2 . More basic numerical intuitions are supported by an evolutionarily ancient approximate number system that is shared by adults 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , infants 7 and non-human animals 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 —these groups can all represent the approximate number of items in visual or auditory arrays without verbally counting, and use this capacity to guide everyday behaviour such as foraging. Despite the widespread nature of the approximate number system both across species and across development, it is not known whether some individuals have a more precise non-verbal ‘number sense’ than others. Furthermore, the extent to which this system interfaces with the formal, symbolic maths abilities that humans acquire by explicit instruction remains unknown. Here we show that there are large individual differences in the non-verbal approximation abilities of 14-year-old children, and that these individual differences in the present correlate with children’s past scores on standardized maths achievement tests, extending all the way back to kindergarten. Moreover, this correlation remains significant when controlling for individual differences in other cognitive and performance factors. Our results show that individual differences in achievement in school mathematics are related to individual differences in the acuity of an evolutionarily ancient, unlearned approximate number sense. Further research will determine whether early differences in number sense acuity affect later maths learning, whether maths education enhances number sense acuity, and the extent to which tertiary factors can affect both.

In Federalism and Subsidiarity, a distinguished interdisciplinary group of scholars in political science, law, and philosophy address the application and interaction of the concept of federalism within law and government. What are the best justifications for and conceptions of federalism? What are the most useful criteria for deciding what powers should be allocated to national governments and what powers reserved to state or provincial governments? What are the implications of the principle of subsidiarity for such questions? What should be the constitutional standing of cities in federations? Do we need to \"remap\" federalism to reckon with the emergence of translocal and transnational organizations with porous boundaries that are not reflected in traditional jurisdictional conceptions? Examining these questions and more, this latest installation in the NOMOS series sheds new light on the allocation of power within federations.

Background Nigeria has adopted comprehensive tobacco control legislation, including the National Tobacco Control Act (NTCA) 2015 and Tobacco Control Regulations 2019, yet continues to experience high tobacco-related morbidity and a substantial illicit cigarette market. Institutional fragmentation and weak enforcement capacity, compounded by evolving obligations under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, undermine effective implementation. Methods A desk-based qualitative policy and regulatory analysis was conducted using three complementary approaches: (1) comparative legal mapping of Nigeria’s tobacco control framework against core WHO FCTC and Illicit Trade Protocol obligations; (2) thematic synthesis of WHO guidance, treaty decisions, and peer-reviewed evidence on institutional arrangements for tobacco regulation; and (3) an implementation-readiness assessment of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) across key capacity domains. Results The analysis identified five interrelated structural gaps: fragmented institutional authority; absence of a central product regulator; weak supply-chain and illicit trade control; inadequate protection from tobacco industry interference; and a regulatory vacuum for emerging nicotine products. Nigeria’s current ministry-led configuration constrains compliance with WHO FCTC Articles 9, 10, 11, and 15, while NAFDAC already possesses significant laboratory, port-of-entry, and digital traceability capacity developed through pharmaceutical regulation. Conclusion Reconfiguring Nigeria’s tobacco control architecture to assign NAFDAC a central technical regulatory mandate, while retaining health policy stewardship within the Federal Ministry of Health (FMoH), offers a legally feasible and context-appropriate pathway to strengthen enforcement, meet evolving treaty expectations, and reduce tobacco-related harms.