Journal articles on the topic 'Inversion de pression'

Résumé La concentration de nitrate dans les 25 principales rivières bretonnes est, dans 90 % des cas, corrélée positivement au débit. Les caractéristiques hydrogéologiques des bassins versants jouent sur les termes de cette corrélation; ainsi, un taux d’écoulement superficiel important (caractéristique des bassins versants peu perméables) renforce cette corrélation et diminue le décalage temporel entre les pointes de crue et de concentration de nitrate. L’évolution pluriannuelle des concentrations de nitrate dans les rivières bretonnes est caractérisée par un quadruplement durant les trente dernières années. Par contre, depuis le milieu des années 90, on observe sur 80 % des rivières une tendance à la décroissance, indépendamment des évolutions pluriannuelles des débits. Le taux annuel de décroissance est d’autant plus fort que le bassin versant présente une part importante d’écoulements superficiels, et a donc une moins grande inertie hydrogéologique. Étant donné que les temps de réaction des bassins versants sont relativement courts (2‑10 ans), il se peut que l’on commence à constater l’effet sur les eaux superficielles d’une inversion de tendance concernant la pression agricole (baisse des fumures organiques et minérales azotées depuis le début des années 90). Ces tendances restent à confirmer et ne permettent pas encore d’atteindre, dans de nombreuses rivières, des concentrations de nitrate inférieures au seuil à partir duquel se produisent des proliférations macroalgales en zone côtière, ou de permettre sans problème la production d’eaux destinées à la consommation humaine.

<p>A Análise de Testes de Poços é um ramo da Engenharia de Reservatórios no qual<br />empregamos dados de pressão de poço a partir de testes de produção/injeção de fluido em conjunto com modelos físico-matemáticos para caracterizar o sistema poço-reservatório, usando problemas inversos. Nessas situações, aplicamos amplamente soluções analíticas e semianalíticas do modelo físico-matemático que descreve o fluxo. Nesse contexto, o objetivo do presente estudo é 1) realizar uma revisão bibliográfica sobre algumas das soluções analíticas clássicas para determinação da pressão no poço produtor e 2) implementar os códigos numéricos para a criação de uma biblioteca computacional, proporcionando as soluções analíticas voltadas para a determinação da pressão em poços produtores de petróleo. Os sistemas poço-reservatório estudados possuem um poço vertical e levam em consideração os efeitos de condições de contorno, a estocagem na coluna de produção do poço, dano à formação, períodos de fluxo e estática, bem como a presença de fraturas naturais. Obtivemos as soluções analíticas usando a transformada de Laplace e uma inversão numérica, utilizando o algoritmo Stehfest, para calcular a variação de pressão ao longo do tempo.</p><p><br /><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: Soluções Analíticas, Transformada de Laplace Inversa, Tranformada de Laplace, Algoritmo de Stehfest, Análise de Teste de Poço.</p><p>===================================================================</p><p>Well Testing Analysis is a branch of Reservoir Engineering, in which we<br />employ well pressure data from production tests/fluid injection in conjunction with physical-mathematical models to characterize the well-reservoir system, using inverse problems. In these situations, we widely used analytical and semi-analytical solutions of the physical-mathematical model that describes the flow. In this context, the objective of this work is to 1) carry out a bibliographic review on some of the classic analytical solutions for determining the pressure in the producing well and 2) implement the numerical codes for the creation of a computational library, providing the analytical solutions aimed at determining pressure in oil-producing wells. The well-reservoir systems with a vertical well take into account the boundary effects, wellbore storage, formation damage, drawdown and buildup test analysis, and the presence of natural fractures. We obtain the analytical solutions using the Laplace transform and a numerical inversion, using the Stehfest algorithm, to calculate the pressure variation in the time domain.</p><p><br /><strong>Key words</strong>: Analytical Solutions, Inverve Laplace Transform, Laplace Transform, Stehfest Algorithm, Well Testing Analysis.</p>

In this work, a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) nonwoven support was prepared by wet-laid and hot-press technology and used as support for separation membranes. The properties of the PET nonwoven support were studied to determine the effect of hot-pressing parameters and PET fiber ratio, and were optimized by response surface methodology. Result showed that the PET nonwoven support with 62% low melting point PET (LPET-180) fibers obtained satisfactory properties and structure after hot pressing at 220 °C under the pressure of 9 MPa for 20 s. The response surface analysis indicated that the temperature and time of hot pressing and the fiber ratio were the most important factors affecting the strength and air permeability of the PET nonwoven support. After hot pressing, the PET nonwoven support exhibited interconnected structure, small pore size, low porosity, and high strength. Then phase inversion technique was applied to prepare a polysulfone (PSF) layer on the PET nonwoven support and an ultra-thin polyamide (PA) active layer was prepared by interfacial polymerization on the PSF layer. The practicality of PET nonwoven support was verified by testing the pure water flux and retention of the PA composite membrane and the structural change of the PA composite membrane before and after use. The results proved the feasibility and remarkable application prospects of hot-pressed wet-laid PET nonwoven support as support for separation membranes.

Abstract This study considers the rheological and interfacial effects on the phase morphology of the rubber/plastic blends during molten-state mixing, cold pressing, and compression molding. We utilized a specially designed tool to take a sample from the mixer and quickly cool it with little chance for coalescence. The work of this report is mainly concerned with soft rubbery compositions, which contain large concentrations of elastomeric phases. The morphologies of rubber/plastic blends having low concentrations of plastic or rubber can be explained by the understanding gained from work previously reported by others. The viscosity-matched and polarity-matched rubber/plastic blend systems give the finer states of dispersion, especially during the early stages of mixing. At intermediate concentrations of rubber, (e.g., 60 vol. %) co-continuous and laminar structures are frequently formed. The determinants of the concentration where the phase inversion occurs and the determinants of phase-domain dimensions near this phase-inversion concentration (e.g., a thickness of a highly shaped structure) are complex and can only be rationalized qualitatively. However, we were able to quantitatively relate phase-morphological dimensions to interfacial tension, rheology, and the observed type of morphology. When the hot batch is cold pressed, then a striated or laminar phase morphology is formed. Even very small particles deform greatly if the interfacial tension is low. Higher viscosities in the dispersed phase give rise to lesser deformations during cold pressing. During compression molding, the laminar structure transforms itself into a random co-continuous structure of vastly increased textural dimensions. This coarsening is greatest when polarities are most divergent and when the viscosities of the polymers are lowest.

Palygorskite has remarkable rheological properties and was used to increase the stability and viscosity of aqueous suspensions. The effects of different physical and chemical processing methods on the apparent viscosity and plastic viscosity of the palygorskite suspensions such as pressing, ultrasound scattering, acidification, and chemical additives have been released. The pressing and ultrasound scattering indicated that the dispersed state of palygorskite could be increased effectively after treatment, and the apparent viscosity of treated-palygorskite samples increased almost 2-3 times compared to that of before. The viscosity of the acid-treated palygorskite suspension was not increased. The viscosity increased with the content of bentonite in the mixture of bentonite and palygorskite in fresh water. It seemed to be not worthy to add a certain amount of bentonite to palygorskite in order to enhance viscosity and vice versa. Chemical additives appeared to have good effects on the rheological behavior of palygorskite suspension. Magnesium oxide revealed great contribution to viscosity enhancement. The main mechanism was the electrostatic attractive interaction between magnesium oxide particles with positive charges and the palygorskite rods with negative charges. This interacted force has an impact on the structural inversion of palygorskite rods and even caused the reinforcing of flocculation.

Copolymers of 3-hydroxyvalerate (HV) and 3-hydroxyhexanoate (HHx) membranes are a new family of biomaterials for tissue engineering applications. The object of this study is to investigate the behavior of rat tooth germ cells on various 3-hydroxyl-butyrate-co-3-hydroxy-hexanoate (PHBHHx) membranes. In this study, PHBHHx membranes from three thin-film processes were used. PHBHHx membranes with different surface morphologies were prepared by phase inversion, electrospinning, and hot pressing. The morphologies of the PHBHHx membranes were investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Tooth germ cells were isolated from four-day-old Wistar rats. The cellular adhesion, proliferation and viability were determined by SEM, BrdU (5-bromo-2-deoxyuridine) and MTT (3-[4, 5-Dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide; Thiazolyl blue) assay. In addition, the adherent behavior of tooth germ cells on various surface structures of PHBHHx was observed under a fluorescence microscope after staining of the cytoskeletal filamentous actin of the cells. It was found that cell compatibility of the PHBHHx membranes made from the phase inversion method (p-PHBHHx) was better than that of the other PHBHHx membranes. The results also revealed that tooth germ cells cultured on the PHBHHx membranes with porous surface structure were well spread relative to those on the fibrous structure of PHBHHx membranes. Therefore, PHBHHx membranes with a porous surface structure can encourage either cell adhesion or cell proliferation. PHBHHx membranes with a porous morphology satisfy biomaterial requirements for a scaffold for tooth regeneration.

Polycrystalline ZnO was sintered with 5 mol.% Ga2O3 at 1350°C for lhour in air. Samples for transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were prepared by cold pressing, grinding, dimpling and Argon ion-milling.ZnO crystallizes in the hexagonal wurtzite structure. Bright field and dark field images reveal lamellar defect structures which are not observed in undoped ZnO. Electron diffraction shows that the lamellar regions consist of heavily twinned ZnO. The twin boundaries (TB) of both twin variants are parallel to lattice planes of type { }. Lattice images along reveal narrow planar twin boundaries as well as a diffuse image contrast within the twin lamellae (Fig. la). to characterize the nature of the boundaries we recorded dark field images of the twinned regions using reflections of type ±{0002}. in combination with microdiffraction it can be shown that the diffuse boundaries are inversion domain boundaries (IDB) which alternate with the sharp TB. This microstructure is related to the polarity of ZnO.

Equal-channel angular pressing (ECAP) is known to induce significant grain refinement and formation of tangled dislocations within the grains. These are induced to evolve to form low-angle boundaries (i.e., cell boundaries) and eventually high-angle boundaries (i.e., grain boundaries). On the other hand, the precipitation sequence of age hardening aluminum alloys can be significantly affected by pre-straining and severe plastic deformation. Thus, ECAP is expected to influence the T6 response of aluminum alloys. In this study, a complex Al-Cu-Mg-Li-Ag-Zr-Sc alloy was subjected to ECAP following different straining paths. The alloy was ECAP at 460 K via route A, C, and by forward-backward route A (FB-route A) up to four passes. That is, ECAP was carried out imposing billet rotation between passes (route A), billet rotation by +90° between passes (route C), and billet rotation by +90° and inversion upside down between passes (FB-route A). The alloy was also aged at 460 K for different durations after ECAP. TEM microstructure inspections showed a marked influence of the different shearing deformations induced by ECAP on the alloy aging response. The precipitation kinetics of the different hardening secondary phases were affected by shearing deformation and tangled dislocations. In particular, the T1-Al2CuLi phase was the one that mostly showed a precipitation sequence speed up induced by the tangled dislocations formed during ECAP. The T1 phase was found to grow with aging time according to the Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner low-power regime.

Fifty-two patients with type I diabetes mellitus were examined. The patients were divided into 4 groups with various duration of the disease: group 1 included patients with the newly diagnosed disease, group 2 those with disease standing of 1 to 5 years, group 3 were patients suffering from diabetes for 6 to 10 years, and group 4 were diabetics for 10 years and more. The parameters examined were antibodies to surface antigens of islet cells, absolute and relative counts of T and В lymphocytes in the peripheral blood, counts of T-helpers and T-suppressors and cytotoxic cells and their ratios, counts of natural killers, DR (+) and IgG (+) cells, and basal C- peptide level. The results showed a correlation between autoantibodies to surface antigens of islet cells and the count of В lymphocytes, an inversion of T lymphocyte subpopulations, with the helper/sup- pressor index increased at the initial stages of the disease and decreasing with the disease progress.

AbstractThe Yb:Lu2O3 precursor made up of spherical particles was synthesized through the co-precipitation method in the water/ethanol solvent. The 5 at% Yb:Lu2O3 powder is in the cubic phase after calcination at 1100 °C for 4 h. The powder also consists of spherical nanoparticles with the average particle and grain sizes of 96 and 49 nm, respectively. The average grain size of the pre-sintered ceramic sample is 526 nm and that of the sample by hot isostatic pressing grows to 612 nm. The 1.0 mm-thick sample has an in-line transmittance of 81.6% (theoretical value of 82.2%) at 1100 nm. The largest absorption cross-section at 976 nm is 0.96×10−20 cm2 with the emission cross-section at 1033 nm of 0.92×10−20 cm2 and the gain cross sections are calculated with the smallest population inversion parameter β of 0.059. The highest slope efficiency of 68.7% with the optical efficiency of 65.1% is obtained at 1033.3 nm in quasi-continuous wave (QCW) pumping. In the case of continuous wave (CW) pumping, the highest slope efficiency is 61.0% with the optical efficiency of 54.1%. The obtained laser performance indicates that Yb:Lu2O3 ceramics have excellent resistance to thermal load stresses, which shows great potential in high-power solid-state laser applications.

OBJETIVO: Determinar a reprodutibilidade da pressão arterial casual de participantes do Estudo Longitudinal de Saúde do Adulto (ELSA-Brasil) e confirmar o diagnóstico pressórico pela monitorização.MÉTODOS: A pressão arterial casual foi medida em aparelho oscilométrico. Uma subamostra dos participantes do estado do Espírito Santo (N = 255) foi reavaliada com igual metodologia de uma a dez semanas após; além disso, foi realizada monitorização. O diagnóstico de hipertensão seguiu os pontos de corte de 140/90 mmHg ou 130/80 mmHg para a pressão casual e na monitorização, respectivamente. A hipertensão do jaleco branco foi definida pela presença hipertensão na medida casual e normotensão na monitorização e o inverso para a hipertensão mascarada.RESULTADOS: Os dados referem-se a 230 participantes que nas duas ocasiões estavam sem medicação (N1 = 153) ou sob a mesma medicação anti-hipertensiva (N2 = 77). No N1, a normotensão casual foi confirmada em 120 dos 134 pela monitorização. No N2, a monitorização confirmou o controle pressórico em 43 dos 54 participantes com pressão controlada pela medida casual. A concordância geral de diagnósticos entre a pressão casual e monitorada foi de 78% (kappa = 0,44). No grupo N1, seis indivíduos (4%) apresentaram hipertensão do jaleco branco e 23 (25%), mascarada.CONCLUSÕES: A concordância de diagnósticos entre a pressão arterial casual e a monitorada foi moderada. A padronização rigorosa da medida casual adotada no ELSA-Brasil foi capaz de reduzir a hipertensão do jaleco branco. A alta frequência de hipertensão mascarada sugere que a medida pressórica da monitorização indique grau elevado de estresse no trabalho.

Background: Alteration in kidney perfusion is an early marker of renal damage. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if changes in renal blood flow (RBF) could be detected using MRI with arterial spin labeling (ASL) technique. Methods: RBF as assessed by cortical (CRBF), medullary, and total renal blood flow (TRBF) were measured by MRI with arterial spin labeling (ASL-MRI) using flow-sensitive alternating inversion recovery true fast imaging with steady-state precession sequence. In 11 normotensive healthy individuals (NT) and 11 hypertensive patients (HT), RBF was measured at baseline and after both feet were covered with cold ice packs (cold pressor test) that activates the sympathetic nervous system. In another experiment, RBF was measured in 10 patients with CKD before and after a pharmacological intervention. We compared RBF measurements between the 3 study populations. Results: A significant reduction in CRBF (p = 0.042) and a trend in TRBF (p = 0.053) were observed in response to the activation of the sympathetic nervous system. A trend toward reduction of CRBF (p = 0.051) and TRBF (p = 0.059) has been detected after pharmacological intervention. TRBF was significantly lower in patients with HT and CKD patients compared to NT individuals (NT vs. HT, p = 0.014; NT vs. CKD, p = 0.004). TRBF was lower in patients with CKD compared to HT (p = 0.047). Conclusion: Our data indicate that both acute and short-term changes in RBF could be detected using ASL-MRI. We were able to detect differences in RBF between healthy and diseased individuals by needing only small sample size per group. Thus, ASL-MRI offers an advantage in conducting clinical trials compared to other technologies.

Este trabajo reflexiona sobre el conflicto socioambiental sucedido en el 2011 en torno al proyecto de minería a cielo abierto Angostura, en Santander, con el objetivo de mostrar las dificultades y contradicciones que enfrentó el proceso de resistencia y organización social que logró que la empresa Greystar (hoy Eco Oro) retirara la solicitud de licencia ambiental y que se ordenara al Estado delimitar el Páramo de Santurbán. Para este fin se revisó la normatividad, así como textos académicos, entrevistas a los distintos actores y artículos periodísticos. Una de las principales conclusiones es que el ascenso de un Estado neoliberal que responsabiliza a la inversión extranjera del crecimiento económico y el progreso social, tiene como resultado el aumento de las desigualdades sociales y económicas, propicia el deterioro ambiental y produce fracturas en la sociedad civil, que al encontrar limitaciones para participar en los asuntos que la afectan, recurren a las movilizaciones masivas en las calles para presionar al Estado, frenar el mercado desregulado y visibilizar las demandas a toda la ciudadanía. Abstract: This paper recovers the socio-environmental conflict happened in 2011 around the Project of opencast mining Angostura in Santander, with the object of show the obstacles, dificulties and contradictions that faced the process of resistance and social organization which managed that the Company Greystar (Today Eco Oro) retire the request of environmental license and that it be ordered to the State delimits the Saturban’s Paramo. For this end it was revised normativity, academic texts, interviews with the different actors and newspaper articles. One of the principals conclussions is that the ascent of a neoliberal State that blames to the foreign investment of the economic growth and social progress results in the increase in social and economics inequalities, propitiates environmental deterioration and produces fractures in civil society that when encountering limitatios for participate in matters that affect it, resort to the massive mobilizations in the streets as a way to put pression on the State, stop the deregulated market and visibilize the demands to the rest of citizens. Keywords: Socio-environmental conflict, neoliberalism, social movements, mining, Foreign Investment.

Abstract A significant scale gap between radar and in situ measurements of rainfall using rain gauges and disdrometers indicates a pressing need for improved knowledge of rainfall variability at the spatial scales below those of today’s operational radar rainfall products, that is, ∼1–4 km. Lidar technology has the potential to fulfill this need, but there has been inconsistency in the literature pertaining to quantitative observations of rain using lidar. Several publications have stated that light scattering properties of raindrops could not be correlated with rain rates, while other papers have demonstrated the existence of such relationships. This note provides empirical evidence in support of the latter claim. The authors conducted a simple experiment using a near-horizontal-pointing elastic lidar to observe rain in Iowa City, Iowa, in the fall of 2005. The lidar signal was used to estimate rainfall quantities that were subsequently compared with independent estimates of the same quantities obtained from an optical disdrometer that was placed about 370 m from the lidar, ∼10 m below the lidar beam. To perform the conversion from the raw lidar signal, the authors used an optical geometry-based procedure to estimate optical extinction data. A theoretical relationship between extinction coefficients and rain rates was derived based on a theoretical drop size distribution. The parameters of the relationship were found through a best-fit procedure using lidar and disdrometer data. The results show that the lidar-derived rain rates correspond to those obtained from the optical disdrometer with a root-mean-square difference of 55%. The authors conclude that although a great deal remains to be done to improve the inversion algorithm, lidar measurements of rain are possible and warrant further studies. Lidars deployed in conjunction with disdrometers can provide high spatial (&lt;5 m) and temporal (&lt;1 min disdrometer, ∼1 s lidar) resolution data over a relatively long distance for rainfall measurements (1–2 km in the case of the University of Iowa lidar).

Abstract. The lower tropospheric (LT) ozone concentration is a key factor for air quality (AQ). Observing efficiently LT ozone from space is crucial to monitor and better understand pollution phenomena occurring from inter-continental to local scales, and that have a proven noxious effect on the human health and the biosphere. The Infrared Atmospheric Sounder Interferometer (IASI) flies on MetOp-A spacecraft and is planned to be launched in the next future as part of the other MetOp modules, i.e. MetOp-B and C. IASI has demonstrated to have the capability to single out the LT ozone signal only at favourable conditions, i.e. in presence of high thermal contrast scenarios. New generation satellite instruments are being designed to address several pressing geophysical issues, including a better observation capability of LT ozone. IASI-NG (New Generation), now having reached the accomplishment of design phase-A for launch in the 2020 timeframe as part of the EPS-SG (EUMETSAT Polar System-Second Generation, formerly post-EPS) mission, may render feasible a better observation of AQ in terms of LT ozone. To evaluate the added-value brought by IASI-NG in this context, we developed a pseudo-observation simulator, including a direct simulator of thermal infrared spectra and a full inversion scheme to retrieve ozone concentration profiles. We produced one month (August 2009) of tropospheric ozone pseudo-observations based on both IASI and IASI-NG instrumental configurations. We compared the pseudo-observations and we found a clear improvement of LT ozone (up to 6 km altitude) pseudo-observations quality for IASI-NG. The estimated total error is expected to be more than 35% smaller at 5 km, and 20% smaller for the LT ozone column. The total error on the LT ozone column is, on average, lower than 10% for IASI-NG. IASI-NG is expected to have a significantly better vertical sensitivity (monthly average degrees of freedom surface-6 km of 0.70) and to be sensitive at lower altitudes (more than 0.5 km lower than IASI, reaching values of nearly 3.0 km). Vertical ozone layers of 4 to 5 km thickness are expected to be resolved by IASI-NG, while IASI has a vertical resolution of 6–8 km. According to our analyses, IASI-NG is expected to have the possibility of effectively separate lower from upper tropospheric ozone information even for low sensitivity scenarios. In addition, IASI-NG is expected to be able to better monitor LT ozone patterns at local spatial scale and to monitor abrupt temporal evolutions occurring at time-scales of a few days, thus bringing an expected added-value with respect to IASI for the monitoring of AQ.

BackgroundThis study sought to test the hypothesis that simultaneous central blood pressure elevation and potent vasodilation can mitigate pial collateral-dependent infarct growth in acute ischemic stroke.MethodsTwenty mongrel canines (20–30 kg) underwent permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Eight subjects received continuous infusion of norepinephrine (0.1–1.5200 µg/kg/min; titrated to a median of 34 mmHg above baseline mean arterial pressure) and hydralazine (20 mg) starting 30 min following MCAO. Pial collateral recruitment was scored prior to treatment and used to predict infarct volume based on a previously reported parameterization. Serial diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisitions tracked infarct volumes over a 4-hour time frame. Infarct volumes and infarct volume growth between treatment and control groups were compared with each other and to predicted values. Fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) MRI, susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI), and necropsy findings were included in the evaluation.ResultsDifferences between treatment and control group varied by pial collateral recruitment based on indicator-variable regression effects analysis with interaction confirmed by regression model fit. Benefit in treatment group was only in subjects with poor collaterals which had 35.7% less infarct volume growth (P=0.0008; ANOVA) relative to controls. Measured infarct growth was significantly lower than predicted by the model (linear regression partial F-test, slope P<0.001, intercept=0.003). There was no evidence for cerebral hemorrhage or posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome.ConclusionOur results indicate that a combination of norepinephrine and hydralazine administered in the acute phase of ischemic stroke mitigates infarct evolution in subjects with poor but not good collateral recruitment.

I. The Fidelity Reflex When Robert Stam entitles one of his recent efforts to theorise adaptation “Beyond Fidelity,” he could be speaking for a wide range of critics (54). Indeed, as the editor of two major adaptation anthologies, he is speaking for them. Stam’s principal objection is the covert moralising of fidelity discourse: “The conventional language of adaptation criticism has often been profoundly moralistic, rich in terms that imply that the cinema has somehow done a disservice to literature. … The standard rhetoric has often deployed an elegiac discourse of loss, lamenting what has been ‘lost’ in the translation from novel to film” (“Introduction”, 3). There are problems with fidelity discourse beyond its implied moralising. For Robert B. Ray and Dudley Andrew, the problem with fidelity is that it makes for boring criticism. “Unquestionably the most frequent and most tiresome discussion of adaptation (and of film and literature relations as well) concerns fidelity and transformation” (31). Part of what makes this discussion tiresome is its unswaying commitment to the historically dubious and logically unnecessary assumption that “the task of adaptation is the reproduction in cinema of something essential about an original text” (Andrew, 31). Linda Hutcheon, similarly bored with fidelity discussions, highlights the same logical flaw: “Of more interest to me is the fact that the morally loaded discourse of fidelity is based on the implied assumption that adapters aim simply to reproduce the adapted text” (7). Hutcheon may be writing 25 years after Andrew, but she still has something to gain by attacking what was, until recently, “the critical orthodoxy in adaptation studies” (7)—what Stam calls “the conventional language” and “the standard rhetoric” (3); what Ray calls (citing Jonathan Culler) “an endless series of twenty-page articles” (47). What she has to gain is the ability to talk about what interests her: “there appears to be little need to engage directly in the constant debate over degrees of proximity to the ‘original’” (7). This is a personal victory, not a disciplinary one (“Of more interest to me;” “I have always had a strong interest in what has come to be called ‘intertextuality’” [xii]). Still, it is a victory, if only on that scale. Andrew, by contrast, hoped his attacks on fidelity discourse would change the discipline. “Let us not use [adaptation] to fight battles over the essence of the media or the inviolability of individual artworks. Let us use it as we use all cultural practices” (37). Reviewing Andrew’s essay in 1984, Christopher Orr was more pessimistic about attempts to change adaptation studies, and blunt about his disciplinary aims: “Given the problematic nature of the discourse of fidelity, one is tempted to call for a moratorium on adaptation studies” (72). And looking back on Andrew and Orr, Ray agreed that harsh measures were necessary for the field, but he more or less blamed Andrew for offering a fillip to fidelity in his call for more sociologically aware studies of adaptation. “I think we more urgently need to know something else” (48). And yet the discipline resists. “All the various manifestations of ‘theory’ over the last decades should logically have changed this negative view of adaptation. … Yet … disparaging opinions on adaptation as a secondary mode—belated and therefore derivative—persist” (Hutcheon, xii-xiii, citing Stam). What I am calling the fidelity reflex, though, is not the persistence of the discourse, but the persistent call for it to end. For adaptation theory to have any chance of success, it must do two things. First, it must account for the persistence of fidelity discourse despite decades of resourceful argument against it. Second, it must account for its own blind spot: What has the campaign against fidelity failed to get at? And given this consistent failure to achieve its goals, why do critics persist in calling for an end to fidelity? II. The Conversation of Judgment How could adaptation studies have resisted such an onslaught—not simply of Hutcheon, Stam, Andrew, Orr, Naremore, Ray, and McFarlane, but also of Irigaray, Kristeva, Foucault, Derrida, Bakhtin, and Barthes? (Hutcheon, 21; Stam, 8-9). Ray’s answer is that the field of film and literature has remained in a “pre-paradigmatic state,” held there by the New Criticism’s “veneration of ‘art’.” (44-5). The “exigencies of the academic market” have given us a mountain of case studies that fail to add up to anything. They are the tribute paid to literature by those who would institutionalise film studies; adaptation studies make film acceptable to literature departments looking to “maintain declining enrollments in the humanities” (47), while “shor[ing] up literature’s crumbling walls” (46). As total an explanation as this is, indeed, as damning as Ray’s indictment of the field may seem, even he finds the origin of the fidelity discourse outside the academy. It lies in our ordinary discussions of adaptations: “Without the benefit of a presiding poetics, film and literature scholars could only persist [there it is again] in asking about individual movies the same unproductive layman’s question (How does the film compare with the book?) getting the same unproductive answer (The book is better)” (44). For Ray, the layman’s question has poisoned academic criticism because it rests on a comparison: “Most of the articles written could have used a variation of the words in the title ‘But Compared to the Original.’” (45). Hence the danger of Andrew’s position for Ray, which offered not freedom from comparison but a typology of relationships. “But Compared to the Original” is the title of an article by William Fadiman from 1965 that attempted to nip fidelity discourse in the bud. Yet as an instance of the fidelity reflex, Fadiman was already late to the game. The locus classicus is George Bluestone’s Novel into Film of 1957. Here, we find those same “unproductive laymen” making “such statements as ‘The film is true to the spirit of the book’; ‘It’s incredible how they butchered the novel’; ‘It cuts out key passages, but it’s still a good film’; ‘Thank God they changed the ending’—these and similar statements are predicated on certain assumptions which blur the mutational process” (Bluestone, 5; Metz, 112). They not only blur the mutational process; these statements make a terrible category error. “Changes are inevitable the moment one abandons the linguistic for the visual medium” (Bluestone, 6). “It is as fruitless to say that film A is better or worse than novel B as it is to pronounce Wright’s Johnson Wax Building better or worse than Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. In the last analysis, each is autonomous” (5-6). Or so Bluestone argues. None of our contemporary critics take such a hard line on medium specificity; for them, the crucial term is “intertextuality”. But whether they are partisans of a modernist medium specificity or a postmodern intertextuality (or intermediality), such critics are all dedicated to the proposition that there can be no hierarchy between textual instances. For the modernists, such rankings are impossible because there is an unbridgeable gap between media; for the postmodernists, because everything exists in a general citational field. Only fidelity discourse seems to require such impossible rankings. As Orr makes clear: “the danger of fidelity criticism, even when it is dealing with the most ‘faithful’ of film adaptations, is that it impoverishes the film’s intertextuality” (72). And if Orr weren’t clear enough, the editors at Wide-Angle chose that passage as a pull quote. Still, like a vampire, fidelity did not die. Let us back up. The joke Ray tells at the expense of his academic critic assumes that while the comparison of film with book has both a technical and an evaluative aspect, nevertheless the surreptitious evaluations of fidelity discourse corrupt even its technical conclusions. Yet it seems odd to claim that fidelity necessarily entails a surreptitious evaluation, even if it has done so in every case. For fidelity to seem a compelling standard, there would necessarily be an antecedent evaluation of the merits of the version the commenter had first encountered. No one would bother to discuss whether a book or film or any other version of a story were faithful unless she already had some allegiance to that story in some form—that would indeed be tiresome. I am saying that fidelity debates provide a way of avoiding questions of quality. Something is faithful or it’s not. At least, whether something is faithful seems an easier question to settle than whether something is better than something very different. Whether and how Cruel Intentions (Roger Kumble, 1999) is faithful to Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 source novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses is an easier question to settle than whether the Johnson Wax Building is better than Swan Lake. Indeed, a person who shifts the conversation from a discussion of merits to a discussion of matching demonstrates an anxiety about settling questions of art. In that case, what is unsettling about the adaptation is not so much its relative goodness (in most cases, that would be quickly settled) as its ability to make us question a judgment we made of the prior work by providing a more-or-less systematic set of alternatives to and deviations from the prior work. (Here I mean prior, not “source” or “adapted” work. Whether we experience the adapted text or the adaptation first, we form our judgments about it, and those are the judgments that are under pressure.) Questions of matching or mis-matching address the viewer’s ability to recognise the systematicity of the differences between source and adaptation; questions of judgment speak to the perceptiveness of the viewer in recognising both the systematicity of the individual works and the grounds for her own judgments. Such recognitions are hard-won and evanescent; what was true for adaptation theorists is true for the laymen. III. Induction, Authority, and the Case Study If we see fidelity discourse as an avoidance of judgment, then, the repeated critical injunction against fidelity because it is surreptitiously judgmental is not an antidote to, but a reiteration of, the fundamental move. We may substitute something new for fidelity—sociology, medium specificity, textual openness—but we may not have improved our position. Indeed, one of the least attractive aspects of the campaign against fidelity is an unwillingness to see at all such “layman’s questions” as efforts to take the aesthetic seriously. If Ray shares Bluestone’s desire to end the conversation of judgment, what is more striking about his piece is that it represents an uncharacteristic step backward from Bluestone’s argument on the same issue. Leading into his dialogue excerpts, Bluestone notes that quantitative analyses of films based on books, or of books sold upon the release of a film “tell us nothing about the mutational process, let alone how to judge it” (5). One might say about Bluestone’s interlocutors that they tell us something, although not much, about the mutational process, and something else, although again not much, about how to judge it. They may be mere laymen, but they exist on a continuum with Bluestone’s own work. What distinguishes Bluestone is twofold: a closer attention to the “mutational process,” and a restriction of our judgment to comparisons within a single medium (5). For Ray, again, the problem with comparisons is not that they are inattentive but that they import precisely the evaluative stance Bluestone is attempting to rule out through a belief in medium specificity. Still, both are wary of the ordinary conversation about adaptations because it is improperly judgmental. For them, the passage from technical comparison to evaluative comparison is a slippery one. Better to hold off any consideration of merit, either through the wall of the medium or the archaeology of knowledge. Yet neither Ray nor Bluestone nor any of the other adaptation theorists has recognised the role fidelity discourse plays in the layman’s discussion, a role that is less the surreptitious evaluation of an adaptation than an attempt at an objective justification of the prior evaluation. When Orr offers a backhanded defense of a limited kind of fidelity criticism—“Fidelity to the letter, in contrast to fidelity to the spirit, can after all be verified” (74)—this is an extension, not a repudiation, of the layman’s discourse. Part of the reason that the evaluation of the worth of a work of art or the success of a story is difficult lies in the search for grounds of comparison. What exactly would make this a better book? A better film? A better game? A better story? And part of the reason that adaptation studies, or laymen’s discussions about the relative merits of two versions of a story, are useful is that multiple versions of the same story make it possible to examine aesthetic alternatives. (What would work better?) Adaptations put the options on the table; they suggest particular alternatives, and (despite Ray’s despair) over time they may provide cumulative support for notions of adaptive success and failure at various levels of generality. Adaptation studies efficiently model the need for induction. If comparisons are the first steps toward theorisation, fidelity discussions are the stalking horses for questions of authority, questions that might be (and are) answered sociologically or anthropologically or economically. Why is the first Harry Potter movie too faithful? Because Rowling successfully negotiated with Warner Bros. to get script approval (Pendreigh). In this frame, fidelity questions should be all the things Ray fears they are not: cumulative, heuristic, and, although he does not put it this way, worth the effort of professionalisation. IV. Fidelity without Borders If fidelity studies are the products of a New Critical “paradigm”, they are an important transformation of it. Where the New Critic might demonstrate the systematicity of a particular work of art, the adaptation critic would displace that systematicity to the relationships between works. No wonder that the attribution of fidelity to an adaptation has suggested to everyone since Bluestone that the next move in the argument should be a turn to the modes through which the system imposes itself—what Bluestone calls “the mutational process,” what Andrew calls “sociology.” Pragmatic questions of mode, process, or sociology frequently appear as pacifications of skeptical questions of knowledge and being. This debate is no exception. One skeptic here is Ray, who initially asks “Why had the cinema committed itself almost exclusively to storytelling?” and then rephrases thus, “Why was commercial filmmaking so eager to make feature-length fictional narrative seem the inherent definition of the cinema?” (42). The latter question is modal, but not in the same way the Harry Potter question was. It displaces its concern from the mode of adaptation to the discourse about that mode, and by doing so it makes the question a more pressing one, one that likely has a particular, historical answer. Ray’s answer is that commercial filmmaking turned to realistic storytelling to appeal to a middle-class audience, to hide its operations, and to solidify its self-regulating industrial oligopoly (45). Here, the denigration of the middle-class audience takes the place of the injunction against fidelity discourse. In this view, middle-class moralists are the perfect complement to an industry always looking for a way to reduce its risks and to find stories that are pre-sold. Yet that image of the industry is both partial and underthought. It is partial because the adapted film does not simply hope to find the same audience its source first located—it wants many more and must expect many others. And it is underthought because when a film turns to literature as a way of guaranteeing an audience, it solicits an audience that is in a unique position to judge it. That audience might find the film worse, better, or somehow irrelevant, but those opinions respond to the film’s openness to judgment in the first place. To be sure, realistic or studio-based cinema might have solicited comparisons only with other films (or with reality, or with the possibilities of film), but that is not, it seems, what occurred. Instead, the cinema in its most commercial forms opened itself up to judgment relative to the novel and the theater. It was a desperately bold move that paid off with startling rapidity. Kamilla Elliott spends the great majority of Rethinking the Novel/Film Debate in an argument that might liberate the discipline from skepticisim. How can adaptation be impossible and pervasive (134)? As an answer, she finds a productive “tension” in criticism between adherence to the theory that the content of a story cannot be separated from its form (hence cannot be carried from novel to film) and heretical arguments that show how it is that content peels off and finds new forms (134). The “heresies” are modes of adaptation that Hutcheon, Stam, and other postmodernist critics would recognise (ventriloquist, de(re)composing, genetic, etc.). Indeed, for Elliott, these heresies that are “so marginalised in the novel and film debate are central to its dynamics” (183). The move “away from categorical models” toward “critical rhetoric and aesthetic practices” (244) and her attempt to write “beyond fidelity” are both seemingly conventional. But for Elliott, the fidelity debate is misguided not because fidelity asks the impossible but because at bottom critics of fidelity seek to purge cinema of its literariness. Her refusal to do that positions her more firmly outside fidelity discourse than any other adaptation theorist. Instead of a rivalry between novel and film, she suggests we imagine literature and cinema to be “reciprocal looking glasses” (209-12). Such an analogy would “ensure … an endless series of inversions and reversals” (212). Fidelity may be gone, but its “endless” parade of case studies remains, yet not because the skeptical question went unasked. “Is adaptation possible?” may be pacified as we turn to practice, but when it comes time to determine exactly which analogies are fruitful because they are endless and which “have a pernicious tendency to invert and twist endlessly” “further clarification” (Elliott, 244) and “further study” (Elliott, 183) will always be needed. If laymen have persisted in judging adaptations and in raising fidelity questions when those judgments slip away, critics have persisted in their attempts to silence that conversation of judgment. Yet once criticism is freed from fidelity discourse’s judgmental “bad conscience,” it can only offer more of itself, endlessly. Questions of practice, authority, and generality float away from their original and insistent occasions. And when our conversation turns to judgments of adaptations, we will no longer have the criticism we most need, one that could let us know when we have reached the end of someone’s persuadability so we might stop trying. References Andrew, Dudley. “Adaptation.” Naremore 28-37. Bazin, André. “Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest.” Naremore 19-27. ———. “In Defense of Mixed Cinema.” What Is Cinema? Sel. and trans. Hugh Gray. Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967. 53-75. Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1957. Fadiman, William. “But Compared to the Original.” Films and Filming 11.5 (1965): 21-3. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. McFarlane, Brian. Novel to Film: An Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Naremore, James. Film Adaptation. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2000. Orr, Christopher. “The Discourse on Adaptation.” Wide Angle 6.2 (1984): 72-6. Pendreigh, Brian. “Hogwarts ’n’ All.” Iofilm 9 Nov. 2001. 9 Mar. 2007 http://www.iofilm.co.uk/feats/filmmaking/harry_potter.shtml>. Ray, Robert. “The Field of Literature and Film.” Naremore 38-53. Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Naremore 54-78. ———. “Introduction: The Theory and Practice of Adaptation.” Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Adaptation. Ed. Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo. New York: Blackwell, 2005. 1-52. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Connor, J.D. "The Persistence of Fidelity: Adaptation Theory Today." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/15-connor.php>. APA Style Connor, J. (May 2007) "The Persistence of Fidelity: Adaptation Theory Today," M/C Journal, 10(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/15-connor.php>.