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The rheological properties of cement grouts are significantly affected by the changes of the time and the water-cement ratio, which determine the diffusion state of grouts in rocks and soils and influence the outcome of projects. In this study, Portland cement grouts with water-cement ratios of 0.50, 0.55, 0.60, 0.65, 0.70, and 0.75 at six moments, including 0 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and 60 minutes, were evaluated to figure out the comprehensive effect of the time and the water-cement ratio on the rheological properties of power-law cement grouts. The results showed that the water-cement ratio had a great influence on both the consistency coefficient and the rheological index of the power-law cement grouts. The former appeared to have a downward trend with the increase of the water-cement ratio, and the latter appeared to have an upward trend. There was a rising tendency between the time and the consistency coefficient, while the rheological index was less affected by time. The difference between its maximum and minimum values was within 5%. Combined with the perspectives of statistical theory, practical applicability, and accuracy, the exponential model was the optimal model for showing the relationship between the comprehensive effects of the time, water-cement ratio, and consistency coefficient of the power-law cement grouts. The linear model was the optimal model of the rheological index based on the comprehensive effect of time and the water-cement ratio. Based on this, a power-law rheological equation with consideration of the comprehensive effect of time and water-cement ratio was established. The research results could not only improve the rheological theory of power-law cement grouts but also provide technical support for engineering practice.

Supplemental material, Supplementary Table 1 for Utility of DWI with quantitative ADC values in ovarian tumors: a meta-analysis of diagnostic test performance by Shan Pi, Rong Cao, Jin Wei Qiang and Yan Hui Guo in Acta Radiologica

We investigated the effect of using a novel segmentation algorithm on radiologists' sensitivity and specificity for discriminating malignant masses from benign masses using ultrasound. Five-hundred ten conventional ultrasound images were processed by a novel segmentation algorithm. Five radiologists were invited to analyze the original and computerized images independently. Performances of radiologists with or without computer aid were evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The masses became more obvious after being processed by the segmentation algorithm. Without using the algorithm, the areas under the ROC curve (Az) of the five radiologists ranged from 0.70∼0.84. Using the algorithm, the Az increased significantly (range, 0.79∼0.88; p0.001). The proposed segmentation algorithm could improve the radiologists' diagnosis performance by reducing the image speckles and extracting the mass margin characteristics.

A model of cascading failures in complex networks with an emergency recovery mechanism is proposed in this paper, and the cascading dynamics is investigated by running the proposed model on nearest-neighbor coupled network, Erdos-Renyi random graph network, Watts-Strogatz small-world network and Barabasi-Albert scale-free network respectively. New concepts in emergency recovery mechanism and the efficiency of networks are defined. And the effects of the parameters on the network efficiency and failure rate are investigated. Results demonstrate that the increase of the emergency recovery probability would reduce the network efficiency decreasing speed and the failure rate growing speed, and also improve the resilience of the network. And the greater the load capacity of the nodes in the network, the slower the speeds of network efficiency reducing and failure rate growing. Meanwhile, with the decrease of the overload node failure probability, the reducing speed of network efficiency and the growing speed of failure rate would reduce gradually. Furthermore, the changes of the network efficiency and failure rate during the process of cascading failures in different network topologies are analyzed. It is found that the rise of the heterogeneity of degree distribution increases the reducing speed of network efficiency and the growing speed of failure rate. All these results can help analyze the cascading dynamics in complex networks with an emergency recovery mechanism, and may provide a guidance for the controling of cascading failures and protecting against them in real-life complex networks.