Coding without sight: Teaching object-oriented java programming to a blind student

In this paper, I describe my experience of teaching object-oriented Java programming to a blind student. This includes the particular environment setup used (a screen reader, JAWS, and an advanced Windows-based text editor, Textpad) and alterations made to the course to accommodate the blind student's special needs. I also discuss how a number of difficulties encountered by the blind student, such as compiling Java applications using the command-line interface and javac, a Java compiler, was addressed and provide some practical recommendations based on my experience

Re-purposing Google maps visualisation for teaching logistics systems

Routing is the process of selecting appropriate paths and ordering waypoints in a network. It plays an important part in logistics and supply chain management as choosing the optimal route can minimise distribution costs. Routing optimisation, however, is a difficult problem to solve and computer software is often used to determine the best route. In an Australian postgraduate course on logistics systems, Logware, a dated software packaged with a textbook was used for teaching routing. A need was felt to replace the software with a more modern tool with an ad-vanced graphical user interface and a high level of visualisation capabilities for a more engaging student experience and better learning outcomes

Reduced dimension modeling of leading edge turbulent interaction noise

A computational aeroacoustics approach is used to model the effects of real airfoil geometry on leading edge turbulent interaction noise for symmetric airfoils at zero angle of attack. For the first time, one-component (transverse), two-component (transverse and streamwise), and three-component (transverse, streamwise, and spanwise) synthesized turbulent disturbances are modeled instead of single frequency transverse gusts, which previous computational studies of leading edge noise have been confined to. The effects of the inclusion of streamwise and spanwise disturbances on the noise are assessed, and it is shown that accurate noise predictions for symmetric airfoils can be made by modeling only the transverse disturbances, which reduces the computational expense of simulations. Additionally, the two-component turbulent synthesis method is used to model the effects of airfoil thickness on the noise for thicknesses ranging from 2% to 12%. By using sufficient airfoil thicknesses to show trends, it is found that airfoil thickness will reduce the noise at high frequency, and that the sound power P will reduce linearly with increasing airfoil thickness

Generating compact classifier systems using a simple artificial immune system

Current artificial immune system (AIS) classifiers have two major problems: 1) their populations of B-cells can grow to huge proportions, and 2) optimizing one B-cell (part of the classifier) at a time does not necessarily guarantee that the B-cell pool (the whole classifier) will be optimized. In this paper, the design of a new AIS algorithm and classifier system called simple AIS is described. It is different from traditional AIS classifiers in that it takes only one B-cell, instead of a B-cell pool, to represent the classifier. This approach ensures global optimization of the whole system, and in addition, no population control mechanism is needed. The classifier was tested on seven benchmark data sets using different classification techniques and was found to be very competitive when compared to other classifiers

Buyers-to-shoppers ratio of shopping malls: A probit study in Hong Kong

Buyers-to-shoppers ratio (i.e. conversion rate) has long been one of the commonly adopted metrics in assessing retail performance of shopping malls, but it is almost always relied on interviews, consumer surveys, and questionnaires. These methods are intrinsically problematic in ascertaining the trustworthiness of the responses. This paper is probably the first objective study on the buyers-to-shoppers ratio based on actual observations in shopping malls in Hong Kong. A probit model is used to study factors affecting the ratio. The results show that consumer-surveys seriously over-estimate the ratio. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd.postprin