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The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence has witnessed its widespread integration across various industries, contributing to enhanced productivity. However, a comprehensive exploration of the underlying factors influencing the behavior of graphic designers in employing such tools remains incomplete. This research aims to amalgamate the IDT theory with the UTAUT2 model to construct a structural model, delving into the factors affecting graphic designers’ behavior in using GenAI tools.

A survey was conducted with 394 respondents, and the results were analyzed using PLS-SEM.

The findings reveal that most factors proposed in both the UTAUT2 and IDT theories exert positive influences. Notably, the study highlights that AI anxiety significantly influences designers’ usage behavior.

This research provides a theoretical foundation and practical guidance for both graphic designers and AI developers.

Utilizing electrical discharge machining (EDM) to process micro-holes in superalloys may lead to the formation of remelting layers and micro-cracks on the machined surface. This work proposes a method of composite processing of EDM and ultrasonic vibration drilling for machining precision micro-holes in complex positions of superalloys.

A six-axis computer numerical control (CNC) machine tool was developed, whose software control system adopted a real-time control architecture that integrates electrical discharge and ultrasonic vibration drilling. Among them, the CNC system software was developed based on Windows + RTX architecture, which could process the real-time processing state received by the hardware terminal and adjust the processing state. Based on the SoC (System on Chip) technology, an architecture for a pulse generator was developed. The circuit of the pulse generator was designed and implemented. Additionally, a composite mechanical system was engineered for both drilling and EDM. Two sets of control boards were designed for the hardware terminal. One set was the EDM discharge control board, which detected the discharge state and provided the pulse waveform for turning on the transistor. The other was a relay control card based on STM32, which could meet the switch between EDM and ultrasonic vibration, and used the Modbus protocol to communicate with the machining control software.

The mechanical structure of the designed composite machine tool can effectively avoid interference between the EDM spindle and the drilling spindle. The removal rate of the remelting layer on 1.5 mm single crystal superalloys after composite processing can reach over 90%. The average processing time per millimeter was 55 s, and the measured inner surface roughness of the hole was less than 1.6 µm, which realized the  micro-hole machining without remelting layer, heat affected zone and micro-cracks in the single crystal superalloy.

The test results proved that the key techniques developed in this paper were suite for micro-hole machining of special materials.

Delivering vaccines to the children who need them requires a supply chain that is efficient and effective. In most of the developing countries, however, the unknown and unresolved supply chain issues are causing inefficiencies in distributing vaccines. There is, therefore, a great need in such countries to recognize the issues that cause delays in vaccine delivery. With this purpose, the present study aims to identify and analyze the key issues in the supply chain of basic vaccines required to immunize children in developing countries.

Based on a field survey of three states of India, in-depth review of relevant literature and experts’ opinions, 25 key issues were recognized as factors of the vaccine supply chain (VSC) and categorized into five main domains. Using integrated interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy analytic network process approaches, the issues have been prioritized to determine their relative importance in the VSC. In addition, a sensitivity analysis has been performed to investigate the priority stability of the issues.

The results of the analysis show that among the five domains of VSC issues, the economic domain with a weight of 0.4262 is the most important domain, followed by the management (0.2672), operational (0.2222), environmental (0.0532) and social (0.0312).

This study focuses on the prioritization of VSC issues; therefore, the results of the present study can provide direction to the decision-makers of immunization programs of developing countries in driving their efforts and resources on eliminating the most important obstacles to design successful vaccination programs.

To the authors’ knowledge, this paper is first to provide a direction to the decision-makers in identifying and managing important issues through the use of an analytical approach.

A survey of the attitudes of students in eight countries towards the revelations of mass surveillance by the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ has been described in an introductory paper and seven country-specific papers (The People’s Republic of China and Taiwan are combined in a single paper). This paper aims to present a comparison of the results from these countries and draws conclusions about the similarities and differences noted.

A questionnaire was deployed in Germany, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, The People’s Republic of China, Spain, Sweden and Taiwan. The original survey was in English, translated into German, Japanese and Chinese for relevant countries. The survey consists of a combination of Likert scale, Yes/no and free-text responses. The results are quantitatively analysed using appropriate statistical tools and the qualitative answers are interpreted (including, where appropriate, consolidated into quantitative results).

There are significant differences between respondents in the countries surveyed with respect to their general privacy attitudes and their willingness to follow Snowden’s lead, even where they believe his actions served the public good.

Owing to resource limitations, only university students were surveyed. In some countries (Germany and New Zealand), the relatively small number of respondents limits the ability to make meaningful statistical comparisons between respondents from those countries and from elsewhere on some issues.

Snowden’s actions are generally seen as laudable and having had positive results, among the respondents surveyed. Such results should give pause to governments seeking to expand mass surveillance by government entities.

There have been few surveys regarding attitudes to Snowden’s revelations, despite the significant press attention and political actions that have flowed from it. The context of attitudes to both the actions he revealed and the act of revelation itself is useful in constructing political and philosophical arguments about the balance between surveillance activity for state security and the privacy of individual citizens.

This study aims to investigate how Snowden’s revelations are viewed by young people in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan through questionnaire surveys of and follow-up interviews with university students in the two countries, taking into account the histories and current status of state surveillance in these countries and the current complicated and delicate cross-strait relationships.

Questionnaire surveys of 315 PRC and 111 Taiwanese university students (a majority studying in those places but a few studying abroad) and semi-structured follow-up interviews with 16 master’s course students from the PRC and one from Taiwan (all studying at Meiji University in Japan) were conducted, in addition to reviews of the literature on privacy and state surveillance in the PRC and Taiwan. The outcomes of the survey were statistically analysed and qualitative analyses of the interview results were also performed.

Youngsters living in the PRC had greater interest in and more knowledge about Snowden’s revelations than those living in Taiwan, and the revelations were positively evaluated in both countries as serving public interest. However, PRC students indicated they were less likely to emulate Snowden than those from Taiwan did.

This study is the first attempt to investigate the social impact of Snowden’s revelations on PRC and Taiwanese youngsters’ attitudes towards privacy and state surveillance as part of cross-cultural analyses between eight countries.