We present here the long-term results of three randomized clinical trials conducted on children with newly diagnosed acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) between 1983 and 1998 by the Children Leukemia Cooperative Group (CLCG) from EORTC. In study 58831/32, the overall event-free survival (EFS) rates (± s.e.) at 6 and 10 years were 66% ± 1.8% and 65% ± 1.8%, respectively, and the risk of isolated central nervous system (CNS) relapse was 6% ± 1% and 7% ± 1%, respectively. In patients with a standard risk of relapse the omission of cyclophosphamide had no adverse effect on disease-free survival rates at 10 years (trial 58831). In medium-and high-risk patients the omission of radiotherapy did not increase the risk of CNS or systemic relapse (trial 58832). In study 58881 (1989-1998) the overall EFS rate at 8 years was 68.4% ± 1.2% and the risk of isolated CNS relapse was 4.2% ± 0.5%. In this trial which adressed three randomized questions, the following results were obtained: the combination of cytarabine at high doses with methotrexate at high doses during interval therapy did not improve prognosis. The addition of 6-mercaptopurine iv during maintenance increased the risk of late relapse. E. coli asparaginase was more toxic and has a higher efficacy than Erwinia asparaginase. Leukocyte counts Ͼ100 × 10 9 /l, specific genetic abnormalities, a poor initial response to steroids or a high level of minimal residual disease at early time points were consistently associated with an adverse prognosis in the 58881 trial.

The French critical zone initiative, called OZCAR (Observatoires de la Zone Critique-Application et Recherche or Critical Zone Observatories-Application and Research) is a National Research Infrastructure (RI). OZCAR-RI is a network of instrumented sites, bringing together 21 pre-existing research observatories monitoring different compartments of the zone situated between "the rock and the sky," the Earth's skin or critical zone (CZ), over the long term. These observatories are regionally based and have specific initial scientific questions, monitoring strategies, databases, and modeling activities. The diversity of OZCAR-RI observatories and sites is well representative of the heterogeneity of the CZ and of the scientific communities studying it. Despite this diversity, all OZCAR-RI sites share a main overarching mandate, which is to monitor, understand, and predict ("earthcast") the fluxes of water and matter of the Earth's near surface and how they will change in response to the "new climatic regime." The vision for OZCAR strategic development aims at designing an open infrastructure, building a national CZ community able to share a systemic representation of the CZ , and educating a new generation of scientists more apt to tackle the wicked problem of the Anthropocene. OZCAR articulates around: (i) a set of common scientific questions and cross-cutting scientific activities using the wealth of OZCAR-RI observatories, (ii) an ambitious instrumental development program, and (iii) a better interaction between data and models to integrate the different time and spatial scales. Internationally, OZCAR-RI aims at strengthening the CZ community by providing a model of organization for pre-existing observatories and by offering CZ instrumented sites. OZCAR is one of two French mirrors of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructure (eLTER-ESFRI) project.