SOLUTIONS (2013SOLUTIONS ( to 2018) is a European Union Seventh Framework Programme Project (EU-FP7) that aims to deliver a solution-oriented conceptual framework for the evidence-based development of environmental policies with regard to water quality and its protection against contamination. This project will integrate innovative chemical and effect-based monitoring tools with a full set of exposure, effect and risk assessment models and strategies to assess abatement options. Uniquely, SOLUTIONS takes advantage of (i) expertise of leading European scientists of major FP6/FP7 projects on chemicals in the water cycle, (ii) access to the infrastructure necessary to investigate the large basins of the Danube and Rhine as well as relevant Mediterranean basins as case studies, and (iii) innovative approaches for stakeholder dialogue and support. In particular, the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) Common Implementation Strategy (CIS) working groups, International River Commissions, and water works associations will be directly supported with consistent guidance for the early detection, identification, prioritization, and abatement options for chemicals in the water cycle. A set of predictive models and tools will support stakeholders' management decisions by benefiting from the wealth of data generated from monitoring and chemical registration. SOLUTIONS will provide a specific emphasis on concepts and tools for the impact and risk assessment of complex mixtures of emerging pollutants, their metabolites and transformation products. Analytical and effect-based screening tools will be applied together with ecological assessment tools for the identification of toxicants and their impacts. Beyond state-of-the-art monitoring and management, tools will be elaborated allowing risk identification for aquatic ecosystems and human health. The SOLUTIONS approach will provide transparent and evidence-based suggestions of River Basin Specific Pollutants for the case study basins and support future review of priority pollutants under the WFD as well as potential abatement options.

Good quality, peer-reviewed literature is crucial in maintaining the integrity and the reputation of the herbal scientific community and promoting good research in TCM. These guidelines provide a clear starting point for this important endeavour. They also provide a platform for adaptation, as appropriate, to other systems of traditional medicine.

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A vast majority Chinese herbal medicines (CHM) are traditionally administered as individually prepared water decoctions (tang) which are rather complicated in practice and their dry extracts show technological problems that hamper straight production of more convenient application forms. Modernised extraction procedures may overcome these difficulties but there is lack of clinical evidence supporting their therapeutic equivalence to traditional decoctions and their quality can often not solely be attributed to the single marker compounds that are usually used for chemical extract optimisation. As demonstrated by the example of the rather simple traditional TCM formula Danggui Buxue Tang, both the chemical composition and the biological activity of extracts resulting from traditional water decoction are influenced by details of the extraction procedure and especially involve pharmacokinetic synergism based on co-extraction. Hence, a more detailed knowledge about the traditional extracts' chemical profiles and their impact on biological activity is desirable in order to allow the development of modernised extracts that factually contain the whole range of compounds relevant for the efficacy of the traditional application. We propose that these compounds can be identified by metabolomics based on comprehensive fingerprint analysis of different extracts with known biological activity. TCM offers a huge variety of traditional products of the same botanical origin but with distinct therapeutic properties, like differentially processed drugs and special daodi qualities. Through this variety, TCM gives an ideal field for the application of metabolomic techniques aiming at the identification of active constituents.