Uci news

Extra treats are in store for these employees of the month. A new study shows that hospital facility dogs can ease pressure on children’s hospital staff while improving the lives of patients and their families. Hospital facility dogs are not your average pooches. These are trained animals, working full-time in hospital settings with a number of duties. At the Shizuoka Children’s Hospital in Japan, where this study was conducted, the dogs’ duties include visiting patients’ bedsides, walking with children to surgery, and cuddling distressed children to help them fall asleep. “The dog’s ability to be a ‘friend’ to the children is a great strength,” Dr Natsuko Murata-Kobayashi of the non-profit children’s care organisation Shine On! Kids, Japan told BBC Science Focus . “It is easy to say that the loving and empathetic nature of a dog makes them good at this work which is absolutely true, but there is a great deal of training and experience behind the scenes that ultimately determine...

Eggs should be stored at a constant temperature below 20°C , according to the scheme that hands out British Lion marks for eggs laid by hens vaccinated against salmonella. Unless you have a cool larder, it is best to store your eggs in the fridge in their original box to prevent odours from surrounding foods breaking through their porous shells. Don’t be tempted to use the egg storage section in the fridge door, because the temperature is too variable with the door’s frequent opening. Take the eggs out of the fridge half an hour before cooking to ensure that the shells don’t crack when boiling and that they have optimal binding qualities when baking. Read more: Why are eggs so useful in baking, and are there any substitutes? Why do eggs taste so different, depending on how they’re cooked? Should eggs be stored pointed end down? Why do hard-boiled eggs sometimes get a grey ring round the yolk? Asked by: Thomas Green, Salisbury To submit your questions email us at questions@sc...

Google Bard is the biggest competitor to the dominating force that is ChatGPT . As the name suggests, Bard comes from the tech giant Google, backed by its mammoth amount of funding, never-ending sources of user data and hundreds of apps, tools and pieces of software. While the product has only been publicly available for a few months, it has already received a major update, touting new features, increased access and a better understanding of what future technology we can expect. It can write jokes for you, design stories at your request, rate the best restaurants in a local area, design a website and a hundred other similar tasks. But this software is by no means perfect and, while it is improving, features a number of problems that keep it from putting everyone out of a job. So how does Google Bard work? And is this yet another example of how  artificial intelligence  is changing the world? What is Google Bard and how can I use it? Google Bard is the latest chatbot to...