Pride of place: The advent of local history in early medieval China.

This work explores the origins of local history writing in China in the second to fourth centuries C.E., focusing on local history as an expression of ideals about the local community, its cultural distinctiveness, and its potential for political autonomy. The research centers on the reconstruction and analysis of the Record of Old Xiangyang (Xiangyang qijiu ji), written by Xi Zuochi in the late fourth century C.E. Local history is considered first within the context of the expansion of narrative writing in the early medieval period, which was closely associated with the desire to record local customs, fengsu. These were considered to consist of two distinct elements: those inherent in human practice, or su, and those inherent in localities, or feng; both were felt to have the power to influence men to moral, cultured behavior. In characterizing su, early local history writers drew upon the tradition of biographical writing to develop an ideal of elite behavior that emphasized a detached, apolitical role in the local community. The community itself was viewed as a cultural forum, for the purpose of demonstrating and lauding restrained behavior and cultural attainment. Characterizations of feng were handled with the more novel genre of locality stories, which served as an antiquarian repository for tales about a local area, especially those with classical roots or allusions to imperial power. Over time, as the early tradition of local biographical compilations died out or was absorbed into imperial history, the more flexible format of locality stories accommodated tales of locals and non-locals alike. The selection of apolitical and non-local standards of value in local history writing is evidence of the medieval elite's powerful sense of identification with a universal classical cultural system, and a correspondingly weak sense of localism.Ph.D.Asian historyGeographySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/130681/2/9811052.pd

Pharmacokinetics and Safety of Single Oral Doses of Emtricitabine in Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Children

Emtricitabine (FTC; Emtriva), a potent deoxycytidine nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, has recently been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. In adults, FTC has demonstrated linear kinetics over a wide dose range, and FTC 200 mg once a day (QD) is the recommended therapeutic dose. A phase I open-label trial was conducted in children to identify an FTC dosing regimen that would provide comparable plasma exposure to that observed in adults at 200 mg QD. Two single oral doses of FTC (60 and 120 mg/m(2), up to a maximum of 200 mg, in solutions) were evaluated in HIV-infected children aged <18 years old. Children ≥6 years old also received a third dose of ∼120 mg/m(2) in capsules. A total of 25 children (two <2 years old, eight 2 to 5 years old, eight 6 to 12 years old, and seven 13 to 17 years old) received at least two doses of FTC. Single escalating oral doses of FTC were well tolerated and produced dose-proportional plasma drug concentrations in children. The FTC pharmacokinetics was comparable between adults and children 22 months to 17 years of age. The capsule formulation provided ∼20% higher plasma FTC exposure than the solution formulation. Using plasma area under the concentration-time curve (AUC) data at the 120-mg/m(2) dose, it is projected (based on dose proportionality) that a 6-mg/kg dose (up to a maximum of 200 mg) of FTC would produce plasma AUCs in children comparable to those in adults given a 200-mg dose (i.e., median of ∼10 h·μg/ml). This pediatric FTC dose is being evaluated in long-term phase II therapeutic trials in HIV-infected children