  Higher-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.
