Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast

Using the example of the crowd who followed Jesus to a deserted place where he healed and fed them, Deacon Luke Loboda encourages us to trust Christ to come into the desolate places of our life to be present with us and heal us.

One of the greatest challenges that we face in our modern era is to resist the ever-changing values of the world. Fr Thomas teaches us that we receive truth, not from politics or social movements, but from the word of God which is planted in our heart by God Himself.

Is the Kingdom of God some far away concept of heaven? Dn. Luke shares with us the tools the Church has provided to live as citizens in the Kingdom of God here and now as well as how to joyfully prepare for the fullness of the Kingdom at Christ's second coming.

Leading into the Great Fast, Fr. Tom urgently calls us to remember that all of the fasting in the world is useless if we neglect the weightier matters.

Listen as Fr. Tom reminds us that the promise of eternal life is tied to the commandment to persist until the very end.

Fr. Gregory gives the sermon on Cheesefare Sunday as we enter into Great Lent.

Fr. Gregory Hallam presents a small selection of the Holy Fathers on the discipline of fasting.

St. Thomas must see to believe … he must have evidence. Jesus readily agrees to his request but then comments that there is blessedness in believing without the need for such evidence.

Fr. Gregory Hallam gives the sermon on Cheesefare Sunday, 2018.

When we fast we are confronted with an important decision: Am I living primarily for self or for service to God and service to others?

Bobby interviews Rita Madden, the author of the new AFP book Food, Faith, and Fasting: A Sacred Journey to Better Health.

Should a human life be ended just so we can harvest their organs for another person's use? It might be closer than you think!

Fr. Philip LeMasters explains that our diet and eating habits have a profound spiritual and moral significance as they shape who we become as people and how we relate to others and to the Lord.

On the occasion of the Sunday of St. Timon and his congregation's ongoing support of its sister parish in Bosra-Hauran, Syria, Fr. Philip LeMasters encourages us to avoid despair and work to alleviate the suffering of our neighbors wherever they are in the world.

In this week’s broadcast, Archimandrite Irenei offers a reflection on a selection of sayings of St John Chrysostom on the pastoral nature of fasting as an act of charity. In what sense does our fast minister to our neighbor?

In this week's broadcast, Fr. Dcn. Matthew offers a reflection on a selection of sayings of St John Chrysostom on the pastoral nature of fasting as an act of charity. In what sense does our fast minister to our neighbor?

Bobby Maddex, Operations Manager of Ancient Faith Radio, interviews John Maddex, the CEO of Conciliar Media Ministries, about the recent electrical storm here in Chesterton, IN, that incapacitated our streaming music station. Can you help us with the funds needed to make sure that this situation never occurs again? We would really appreciate it!

On a special edition of Ancient Faith Presents, Elissa Bjeletich, the host of the AFR podcast Raising Saints, interviews Melissa Naasko, the author of Fasting as a Family: Planning and Preparing Delicious Lenten Meals, published by Ancient Faith Publishing.

Bobby Maddex, Operations Manager of Ancient Faith Radio, interviews Melinda Johnson, the Director of Marketing and Development with Ancient Faith Ministries, about our upcoming Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference.

Bobby Maddex interviews Melinda Johnson, the Marketing Director of Ancient Faith Ministries, about the 2017 Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference, which will take place at Antiochian Village this coming June 15-17.

Melinda Johnson, the Marketing Director of Ancient Faith Ministries, talks about the Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference, which will take place June 13-15 at Antiochian Village in Bolivar, Pennsylvania. Click here to register!

Bobby Maddex interviews Katherine Hyde, the Acquisitions Editor of Ancient Faith Publishing, about the Ancient Faith Writing and Podcasting Conference.

Bobby Maddex interviews Rita Madden, a Master of Public Health, a registered dietician, and the host of the AFR podcast Food, Faith, and Fasting, about her upcoming virtual conference.

There are times in our lives when we make our own the petition of the father in Mark 9: “Help my unbelief.” But faith is increased only by being tested. Fr. Pat offers reflections on this.

When fasting, we focus on what goes into our mouths, what we eat. But what about what comes out of our mouths, what we say?

Sometimes we talk about "giving up" something for Lent. Is the Church asking us to give up what we want or inviting us to build the discipline we need to make the right choices?

Why do we fast? What can that teach us about food?

Living Eucharistic Lives Colossians 3:4-11, Luke 17:12-19

James Yu has a screenshot of a new design Google has been testing lately.

What do you already know about hosting WooCommerce stores? When it comes to hosting WooCommerce stores, you may have already read some of my articles on choosing a WordPress host, or how to think about WooCommerce already. But maybe you haven't. Or maybe you read the super sharp article by Carl Alexander on using a ... Read more

The post Hosting WooCommerce Stores with Unexpected High Traffic appeared first on Chris Lema.

BBC Radio Stoke’s Stuart George discusses the unveiling of Vale Park's John Rudge statue.

Farmers say the National Trust has damaged heathland on the Long Mynd.

People react to proposals to shut an "expensive" visitor centre in a seaside town.

Content may be king, but data sits behind the throne and has the king’s ear. 

You want to be informed by data before you make changes to your marketing strategies. This is never truer than in the case of your website, which is a rich source of behavioural analytics and, therefore, a valuable insight into your audience’s interests.

1. Struggling DNA-testing site 23andMe to lay off 40% of its workers  BBC.com
2. 23andMe lays off 40% of its workforce, ends therapeutics division  CBC.ca
3. Genetic testing firm 23andMe cuts 40% of its workforce amid financial struggles  The Guardian
4. 23andMe reports sales decline a day after announcing plans to cut 40% of workforce  CNBC
5. 23andMe warns of ‘substantial doubt’ over its survival without new funding  Financial Times

Since its birth, the stock market has received widespread attention from many scholars and investors. However, there are many factors that affect stock prices, including the company's own internal factors and the impact of external policies. The extent and manner of fundamental impacts also vary, making stock price predictions very difficult. Based on this, this article first introduces the research significance of the stock market prediction framework, and then conducts academic research and analysis on two key sentences of stock market prediction and artificial intelligence in stock market prediction. Then this article proposes a constructive algorithm theory, and finally conducts a simulation comparison experiment and summarises and discusses the experiment. Research results show that the neural network prediction method is more effective in stock market prediction; the minimum training rate is generally 0.9; the agency's expected dilution rate and the published stock market dilution rate are both around 6%.

The supply chains of the Canadian forest products industry are largely dependent on accurate demand forecasts. The USA is the major export market for the Canadian forest products industry, although some Canadian provinces are also exporting forest products to other global markets. However, it is very difficult for each province to develop accurate demand forecasts, given the number of factors determining the demand of the forest products in the global markets. We develop multi-layer feed-forward artificial neural network (ANN) models for demand forecasting of the Canadian forest products industry. We find that the ANN models have lower prediction errors and higher threshold statistics as compared to that of the traditional models for predicting the demand of the Canadian forest products. Accurate future demand forecasts will not only help in improving the short-term profitability of the Canadian forest products industry, but also their long-term competitiveness in the global markets.

As both the frequency and the severity of network breaches have increased in recent years, it is essential that cybersecurity is incorporated into the core of business operations. Evidence from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2012) indicates that there is, and will continue to be, a severe shortage of cybersecurity professionals nationwide throughout the next decade. To fill this job shortage we need a workforce with strong hands-on experience in the latest technologies and software tools to catch up with the rapid evolution of network technologies. It is vital that the IT professionals possess up-to-date technical skills and think and act one step ahead of the cyber criminals who are constantly probing and exploring system vulnerabilities. There is no perfect security mechanism that can defeat all the cyber-attacks; the traditional defensive security mechanism will eventually fail to the pervasive zero-day attacks. However, there are steps to follow to reduce an organization’s vulnerability to cyber-attacks and to mitigate damages. Active security tests of the network from a cyber-criminal’s perspective can identify system vulnerabilities that may lead to future breaches. “If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. But if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of hundred battles” (Sun, 2013). Penetration testing is a discipline within cybersecurity that focuses on identifying and exploiting the vulnerabilities of a network, eventually obtaining access to the critical business information. The pentesters, the security professionals who perform penetration testing, or ethical hackers, break the triad of information security - Confidentiality, Integrity, and Accountability (CIA) - as if they were a cyber-criminal. The purpose of ethical hacking or penetration testing is to know what the “enemy” can do and then generate a report for the management team to aid in strengthening the system, never to cause any real damages. This paper introduces the development of a penetration testing curriculum as a core class in an undergraduate cybersecurity track in Information Technology. The teaching modules are developed based on the professional penetration testing life cycle. The concepts taught in the class are enforced by hands-on lab exercises. This paper also shares the resources that are available to institutions looking for teaching materials and grant opportunities to support efforts when creating a similar curriculum in cybersecurity.

To assess a country's economic outlook and achieve higher economic growth, econometric models and prediction techniques are significant tools. Policymakers are always concerned with the correct future estimates of economic variables to take the right economic decisions, design better policies and effectively implement them. Therefore, there is a need to improve the predictive accuracy of the existing models and to use more sophisticated and superior algorithms for accurate forecasting. Deep learning models like recurrent neural networks are considered superior for forecasting as they provide better predictive results as compared to many of the econometric models. Against this backdrop, this paper presents the feasibility of using different deep-learning neural network architectures for trade forecasting. It predicts export trade using different recurrent neural architectures such as 'vanilla recurrent neural network (VRNN)', 'bi-directional long short-term memory network (Bi-LSTM)', 'bi-directional gated recurrent unit (Bi-GRU)' and a hybrid 'bi-directional LSTM and GRU neural network'. The performances of these models are evaluated and compared using different performance metrics such as Mean Square Error (MSE), Mean Absolute Error (MAE) Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), Root Mean Squared Logarithmic Error (RMSLE) and coefficient of determination <em>R</em>-squared (<em>R</em>²). The results validated the effective export prediction for India.