Fr. Michael shares his reflections from Abbess Thaisia: An Autobiography. Visit his blog.

Fr. Michael reflects on this quote from St. Isaac the Syrian (Homily 36), "A small affliction borne for God’s sake is better before God than a great work performed without tribulation; for affliction willingly borne brings to light the proof of love…."

In an on-going discussion with my inquiring friend today, I respond to two questions. First, why do traditional Christians call priests father; and second, why do we pray to saints (i.e. why don’t we just go to God ourselves)? Orthodoxy assumes that it takes a “village” to raise a Christian. And not just a village of people who live in the same time and place, but a village that includes all of our holy Fathers and Mothers who have gone before us. When we come to God, we come with everyone, never by ourselves.

The girls saw the new children’s movie, Smallfoot. They discuss the complex nature of truth, how important it is to ask questions, and how we can use technology to create false images of ourselves. They close with their Top 5 Mythical Creatures.

The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos calls us to live faithfully as those who have put on Christ like a garment in baptism, been filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, and become guests at the heavenly banquet in the Eucharist.

Fr. Theodore Paraskevopoulos defines the difference between heresy and schism, and why unity matters to us today.

The work of the prophet Haggai is short and easy to miss; it is a mere two chapters in our Bibles sandwiched in between the books of Zephaniah and Zechariah. If you are flipping quickly through the final pages of the Old Testament he easy to miss. After ploughing through longer works such as those of Isaiah (66 chapters), Jeremiah (52 chapters, plus 5 more chapters of Lamentations), and Ezekiel (48 chapters), Haggai looks positively puny in comparison

This is lesson three in Fr. Apostolos' series on Divine Worship; this installment addressing the historical development of the Small Entrance and the significance of the Readings in view of the centrality of Holy Scripture in the lives of Christian believers.

Fr. Apostolos Hill gives a brief historical review of the excavation of Golgotha and the history of the Precious Cross of Christ, then an examination of the challenge of understanding the Cross in our own time.

Fr. Christopher reminds us that the coming of Christ was an act of mercy and salvation in a world soiled by darkness, sin and evil.

How does God speak to us? Are we listening?

Dr. Albert Rossi shares his understanding of how to discover Christ's joy in both the small and great experiences of our daily lives.

Dr. Albert Rossi talks about the importance of doing the little things, and what a small gesture can mean to another person.

Preaching from 1 Corinthians 3:18 through 4:8, Fr. Pat discusses wisdom and knowledge, intellectual self-deception and the wisdom of God.

"Saint Cosmas came from Bulgaria where his devout parents provided him with a good education in Slavonic and Greek. They wanted him to marry but he was drawn by the love of Christ and, unknown to them, made his way to the Holy Mountain of Athos to become a monk at the Bulgarian monastery of Zographou. On the feast of the Annunciation at the Monastery of Vatopedi, he saw a woman among those serving in the Church and in the refectory, and he was grieved at first to observe this breach of the monastic rule, but overjoyed when he realized that it was the Mother of God who had appeared to him in this way.   "He was clothed in the holy angelic Habit and, after some time, was ordained priest. One day, as he was praying before the icon of the Mother of God, asking her with tears how to achieve his salvation, he heard a voice saying, 'Let my servant withdraw to the desert outside the monastery.' He was obedient to the will of God and, with the blessing of his Abbot, lived in silence from then on. Some years later, he was found worthy of the grace of discernment of thoughts and of beholding things happening elsewhere, as well as of other spiritual gifts. In the course of many years, he was the spiritual helper of a great number of monks. At the end of his life, Christ appeared to him saying that he would shortly have a great trial to endure from the Devil. Indeed, the prince of demons made his appearance next day with a host of his servants bewailing and bemoaning their inability to annihilate their great enemy Cosmas, who had held them in check for so long and gained possession, by his virtue, of the throne in Heaven that had once been Lucifer's. Taking a heavy stick, the demon beat the Saint so violently that he left him half-dead. As God allowed, Saint Cosmas died in peace two days later, on 22 September 1323. When the fathers came from the monastery to bury him, the wild animals gathered round. They kept silent until the end of the service, but howled unusually loud as his body was covered with earth. Then having paid their respects, they made off into the wilderness. Forty days later, the monks came to take up the body of Saint Cosmas and translate it to the monastery, but it was no longer in the grave. Where it now is God alone knows." (Synaxarion)

Details about how it works in the link.

Great Britain's Jack Draper smashes his racquet after losing the opening set against Canada's Felix Auger-Aliassime during their Davis Cup match in Manchester.

BBC tennis correspondent Russell Fuller looks at the team and the sacrifices behind "absolute tennis keeno" Jack Draper's run to the US Open semi-finals.

Anwen Roberts was heartbroken after finding her cards were sold on Temu without her permission.

Inspectors say six people were found working at a pizza restaurant and car wash without visas.

Club members are not exactly bowled over when a Smart car driver blocks them in their car park.

The iPhone could finally show you how long it’ll take to finish charging. Code spotted in the second iOS 18.2 beta by 9to5Mac shows a new “BatteryIntelligence” feature that will let you […]

The post Apple to roll out ‘Battery Intelligence’ for iPhone, Amazon slashes price of 43inch Hisense smart TV to £228 appeared first on Tech Digest.

The way smart energy meters work in northern England and Scotland is causing issues for customers, BBC Panorama has been told. The body that represents energy companies, Energy UK, has […]

The post Smart meters in north/south divide, Bitcoin breaks through $82,000 barrier appeared first on Tech Digest.

Which? research has found evidence of excessive smart device surveillance – from air fryers demanding permission to listen in on your conversations and sharing data with TikTok, to TVs wanting […]

The post Is my Air Fryer spying on me? Evidence of excessive smart home surveillance appeared first on ShinyShiny.

Improving website structures is the main task of a website designer. In recent years, numerous web engineering researchers have investigated navigation recommendation systems. Page recommendation systems are critical for mobile website navigation. Accordingly, we propose a smart and adaptive navigation recommendation system based on reinforcement learning. In this system, user navigation history is used as the input for reinforcement learning model. The model calculates a surf value for each page of the website; this value is used to rank the pages. On the basis of this ranking, the website structure is modified to shorten the user navigation path length. Experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The results revealed that user navigation paths could be decreased by up to 50% with training on 12 months of data, indicating that users could more easily find a target web page with the help of the proposed adaptive navigation recommendation system.

1. First Oppo Reno13 image appears online - GSMArena.com news  GSMArena.com
2. First look at Oppo Reno 13 shows an iPhone-like design  Notebookcheck.net
3. Oppo Reno13 series to arrive on November 25 - GSMArena.com news  GSMArena.com

(Belga) L'ex-député européen Mark Demesmaeker, désormais sénateur coopté N-VA, sera la tête de liste du parti nationaliste pour les élections communales d'octobre 2024 à Hal (Brabant flamand), a-t-il indiqué lundi, confirmant des informations de presse.

M. Demesmaeker est conseiller communal à Hal depuis 2007 et y a été échevin durant six ans. La N-VA a terminé à deux reprises, lors des scrutins communaux de 2012 et 2018, comme premier parti de la commune. M. Demesmaeker a affirmé lundi toujours avoir cette ambition. "Nous avons une équipe jeune et soudée, avec expertise et vision. Je vise une progression", a-t-il dit. Il s'est dit convaincu que le changement de législation en Flandre - qui prévoit que le plus grand parti dispose d'un droit d'initiative pour former une coalition communale et que le candidat du plus grand groupe ayant recueilli le plus de voix de préférence devienne bourgmestre - lui offre un solide avantage. "Nous avons de bonnes chances, a-t-il souligné. L'élu nationaliste a affirmé vouloir se concentrer sur des thèmes comme l'urbanisation de Hal et la politique en matière de langue, en évoquant la "francisation de la ville". (Belga)

Smart cities research is growing all over the world seeking to understand the effect of smart cities from different angles, domains and countries. The aim of this study is to analyse how the smart city ICTs (e.g., big data analytics, AI, IoT, cloud computing, smart grids, wireless communication, intelligent transportation system, smart building, e-governance, smart health, smart education and cyber security) are related to government. services and society welfare from the perspective of China. This research confirmed a positive correlation of smart city ICTs to e-Govt. Services (e-GS). On the other hand, the research showed a positive influence of smart city ICTs on society's welfare. These findings about smart cities and ICTs inform us how the thought paradigm to smart technologies can cause the improvement of e-GS through economic development, job creation and social welfare. The study offers different applications of the theoretical perspectives and the management perspective which are significant to building a society during recent technologised era.

The confluence of the internet of things (IoT) with smart grids has ushered in a paradigm shift in energy management, promising unparalleled efficiency, economic robustness and unwavering reliability. However, this integrative evolution has concurrently amplified the grid's susceptibility to cyber intrusions, casting shadows on its foundational security and structural integrity. Machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) emerge as beacons in this landscape, offering robust methodologies to navigate the intricate cybersecurity labyrinth of IoT-infused smart grids. While ML excels at sifting through voluminous data to identify and classify looming threats, DL delves deeper, crafting sophisticated models equipped to counteract avant-garde cyber offensives. Both of these techniques are united in their objective of leveraging intricate data patterns to provide real-time, actionable security intelligence. Yet, despite the revolutionary potential of ML and DL, the battle against the ceaselessly morphing cyber threat landscape is relentless. The pursuit of an impervious smart grid continues to be a collective odyssey. In this review, we embark on a scholarly exploration of ML and DL's indispensable contributions to enhancing cybersecurity in IoT-centric smart grids. We meticulously dissect predominant cyber threats, critically assess extant security paradigms, and spotlight research frontiers yearning for deeper inquiry and innovation.

Constrained programming is the concept used to select possible alternatives from an incredibly diverse range of candidates. This paper proposes an AI-assisted Backtracking Scheme (AI-BS) by integrating the generic backtracking algorithm with Artificial Intelligence (AI). The detailed study observes that the extreme dual ray associated with the infeasible linear program can be automatically extracted from minimum unfeasible sets. Constraints are used in artificial intelligence to list all possible values for a group of variables in a given universe. To put it another way, a solution is a way of assigning a value to each variable that these values satisfy all constraints. Furthermore, this helps the study reach a decreased search area for smart backtracking without paying high costs. The evaluation results exhibit that the IB-BC algorithm-based smart electricity schedule controller performs better electricity bill during the scheduled periods than comparison approaches such as binary backtracking and binary particle swarm optimiser.

Pandemic has compelled the entire world to change their way of life and work. To control the infection rate, academic institutes deliver education online similarly. At least one smartphone is available in every home, and students use their smartphones to attend class. The study investigates the link between smartphone usage (SU) and academic performance (AP) during the pandemic. 490 data were obtained from various institutions and undergraduate students using stratified random sampling. These components were identified using factor analysis and descriptive methods, while the relationship of SU and AP based on gender classification was tested using Smart-PLS-SEM. The findings show that SU has a substantial relationship with academic success, whether done in class or outside of it. Even yet, the study found that SU and AP significantly impact both male and female students. Furthermore, the research focuses on SU outside and within the classroom to improve students' AP.

Aim/Purpose: To identify positive and negative aspects for learning of interactive tablet technology learning activities that promote student engagement and learning. Background: Engaging students in mathematics classes is an on-going challenge for teachers. In 2008 we were offered the opportunity to run interactive activities with a class set of tablet PCs that had just been released on to the market. Since then, we have run these interactive activities continuously with mathematics classes for computing students, albeit with two changes in hardware. Methodology: In the interactive activities, students submit full worked solutions to various problem types (classified as table, text, open or multi-choice) which can then be displayed to the class anonymously, discussed and annotated by the teacher. We surveyed student and staff perceptions and monitored academic performance. Contribution: We have over 10 years of results, observations, and experience from 2008, when tablet technologies were new and expensive, to the current time, when modern tablets with styli are now affordable. Findings: There was a significant increase in higher grades although pass rates did not increase significantly. Over the ten year period of the study, perceptions of students and staff about how this technology impacted on student learning were consistently positive. The majority of students found all problem types useful for learning even those they rated “too hard” or “too easy”. Benefits included increased feedback, peer learning and engagement. Recommendations for Practitioners: We recommend using tablet learning activities to engage students and teachers and to contribute to learning. Impact on Society: This study shows how using tablet technologies for interactive classroom activities can enable and enhance known pedagogies of feedback, peer instruction, and student engagement for mathematics classes. Future Research: We recommend extending this study to include larger classes, and other technical subjects that use symbols and diagrams. In addition, we suggest considering control groups.

Aim/Purpose: To conduct a needs assessment and subsequently create micro-storytelling media aimed at enhancing the Digital Intelligence Quotient (DQ) skills of young individuals. Background: In today's digital society, DQ has emerged as a vital skill that elevates individuals in all aspects of life, from daily living to education. To empower Thai youth, this study seeks to innovate DQ content by adapting it into a digital format known as micro-storytelling. This unique approach combines the art of storytelling with digital elements, creating engaging and effective micro-learning media Methodology: The methodology comprises three phases: 1) assessing the need for digital micro-storytelling development; 2) developing digital micro-storytelling; and 3) evaluating the DQ skills among young individuals. The sample group consisted of 55 higher education learners for needs assessment and 30 learners in the experiment group. Data analysis involves PNI modified, mean, and standard deviation. Contribution: This research contributes by addressing the urgent need for DQ skills in the digital era and by providing a practical solution in the form of digital micro-storytelling, tailored to the preferences and needs of Thai youth. It serves as a valuable resource for educators and policymakers seeking to empower young learners with essential digital competencies. Findings: The findings demonstrate three significant outcomes: 1) The learners wanted to organize their own learning experience with self-paced learning in a digital landscape, and they preferred digital media in the form of video. They were most interested in developing DQ to enhance their understanding of digital safety, digital security, and digital literacy; 2) according to a consensus of experts, digital micro-storytelling has the greatest degree of quality in terms of its development, content, and utilization, with an overall average of 4.86; and 3) the overall findings of the assessment of DQ skills indicate a favorable level of proficiency. Recommendations for Practitioners: Align materials with micro-learning principles, keeping content concise for effective knowledge retention. Empower students to personalize their digital learning and promote self-paced exploration based on their interests. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers should continuously assess and update digital learning materials to align with the evolving digital landscape and the changing needs of students and investigate the long-term effects of DQ improvement, especially in terms of online safety and digital literacy in students' future lives and careers. Impact on Society: This study's impact on society is centered around fostering a DQ, promoting innovative educational approaches, and elevating Thai youth with essential digital skills. It contributes to a safer, more informed, and digitally literate generation prepared for the challenges of the digital era. Future Research: Undertake comparative studies to analyze the effectiveness of different digital learning formats and methodologies. Comparing micro-storytelling with other approaches can help identify the most efficient and engaging methods for enhancing DQ.

Smart home devices are vulnerable to various attacks, including distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Current detection techniques face challenges due to nonlinear thought, unusual system traffic, and the fluctuating data flow caused by human activities and device interactions. Identifying the baseline for 'normal' traffic and suspicious activities like DDoS attacks from encrypted data is also challenging due to the encrypted protective layer. This work introduces a concept called synoptic crow search with recurrent transformer network-based DDoS attack detection, which uses the synoptic weighted crow search algorithm to capture varying traffic patterns and prioritise critical information handling. An adaptive recurrent transformer neural network is introduced to effectively regulate DDoS attacks within encrypted data, counting the historical context of the data flow. The proposed model shows effective performance in terms of low false alarm rate, higher detection rate, and accuracy.

International universities are changing with their style of operation, mode of teaching and learning operations. This change is noticeable rapidly in India and also in international contexts due to healthy and innovative methods, educational strategies, and nomenclature throughout the world. Technologies are changing rapidly, including ICT. Different subjects are developed in the fields of IT and computing with the interaction or applications to other fields, viz. health informatics, bio informatics, agriculture informatics, and so on. Agricultural informatics is an interdisciplinary subject dedicated to combining information technology and information science utilisation in agricultural sciences. The digital agriculture is powered by agriculture informatics practice. For teaching, research and development of any subject educational methods is considered as important and various educational programs are there in this regard viz. Bachelor of Education, Master of Education, PhD in Education, etc. Degrees are also available to deal with the subjects and agricultural informatics should not be an exception of this. In this context, Doctor of Education (EdD or DEd) is an emerging degree having features of skill sets, courses and research work. This paper proposed on EdD program with agricultural informatics specialisation for improving healthy agriculture system. Here, a proposed model core curriculum is also presented.