2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/185829Higher-order pQCD corrections play an important role in the reproduction of data at high transverse momenta in the energy range 20 GeV $ \leq \sqrt{s} \leq 200$ GeV. Recent calculations of photon and pion production in $pp$ collisions yield detailed information on the next-to-leading order contributions. However, the application of these results in proton-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions is not straightforward. The study of nuclear effects requires a simplified understanding of the output of these computations. Here we summarize our analysis of recent calculations, aimed at handling the NLO results by introducing process and energy-dependent $K$ factors.4 pages with 5 eps figures includedNuclear TheoryHigh Energy Physics - Phenomenologytext