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Wednesday • February 14, 2024
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Happy Valentine’s Day! Many will be picking up bouquets for their loves today, but did you know that most flowers have to pass through the Miami International Airport before landing in U.S. stores? Over the past three weeks, hundreds of flights from Colombia and Ecuador have delivered around 18,000 tons of flowers to the Florida hub. There were roses and carnations from Bogota; pompons, hydrangeas, and chrysanthemums from Medellin; and roses, carnations, and gypsophila from Quito, the Associated Press reports, citing airline Avianca. Check out a video chronicling how the stems make it from South America’s flower fields to your neighborhood shop.
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Science
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| The Surprising Power of Holding Hands With the People We Love |
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miniseries/ iStock
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Anecdotally, we can all probably speak to the soothing power of holding hands with a loved one. But there’s also some real science behind those positive feelings we associate with hand-holding.
“If you really understand hand-holding — what it is and how it has its effects — you begin to understand just about every single facet of what it is to be a human being,” clinical psychologist James Coan told Dr. Trisha Pasricha in her recent “Ask a Doctor” column for The Washington Post. “It expresses all the things that we are for each other.”
Coan has been involved in several experiments on the topic, including one in which 16 married women were placed in MRI machines and faced with the prospect of an electric shock. When they held hands with strangers, it lowered their stress. When they held hands with their husbands, it lowered their stress even more. And the most profound effect occurred in couples who scored highest on marital quality tests.
Subsequent studies replicated this result with other types of relationships, including friends and those who were dating. For Coan, the most surprising revelation from the experiments is that hand-holding isn’t an added benefit or a boost to our brains. Rather, it represents the baseline — we’re meant to be sharing our lives, and our burdens, with other people. “To the human brain, the world presents a series of problems to solve,” he said. “And it turns out being alone is a problem.”
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Reach Your Financial Goals This Year
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In addition to physical and mental health, it’s important to pay attention to your financial health. And choosing the right credit card can play a major role when it comes to reaching your financial goals this year. Whether you’re looking to wipe out burdensome debt or finance a large purchase, Wise Bread can help you find the card that’s best for you.
The site’s experts have rounded up some of the top options for you to compare, all with 0% interest until 2025 and no annual fee. Plus, each card comes with a welcome offer worth $200 or more, so you’ll be set up for success.
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*Please support our sponsors! They help us keep Nice News free. ♡
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Environment
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| Hollywood Sets Often End Up in Landfills — Inside the Efforts to Change That |
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Mel Melcon/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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When a movie or television production wraps, the sets are traditionally taken directly to the dumpster, a practice that obviously generates significant waste. According to Earth Angel, a company focused on helping productions be more sustainable, the average TV show or film in 2022 created around 240 tons of waste, roughly half of which came from props and sets.
But there are some art directors who are working to make Hollywood greener. “To find a true circular solution, a true zero waste idea, is what we’re working toward,” Karen Steward, who helped found the Art Directors Guild’s Green Committee, told NPR.
That solution involves reusing pieces when possible, or donating them to students and up-and-coming filmmakers who are looking to build sets on a budget. That’s what EcoSet does — productions pay the service to remove sets, props, and materials, which are then compiled in a Los Angeles warehouse.
“I think this place is very friendly for students who don’t have so much funding and support,” film student Oyster Liao said as she browsed the space. “And I like that we don’t have to waste so much.”
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Innovation
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| World-First Prosthetic Limb Device Can Sense Different Temperatures |
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| EPFL/Caillet |
Scientists have developed an inexpensive device that allows amputees to sense different temperatures via a prosthetic limb — and it’s a world-first. The efficacy of the device, called the MiniTouch, was detailed in a recent study from researchers at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, and École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland.
“With these new technologies I can understand better what I am touching,” Fabrizio Fidati (pictured), a 57-year-old man who had his arm amputated below the elbow, told Smithsonian Magazine after testing the MiniTouch. “Certainly, my priority would be to use it in a kitchen to cook!”
Beyond increasing the functionality of prosthetic limbs, incorporating temperature allows amputees to feel more connected to their limbs and the world around them.
“We have a colleague who says touch without temperature is like vision without color,” said study co-author Solaiman Shokur. He added that the eventual goal will be to add other sensations as well, like texture and proprioception, which helps us perceive the locations and movements of our body parts.
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In Other News
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Inspiring Stories
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Great minds think alike
Amanda and Valerie Smith unexpectedly proposed to each other at the same time during a vacation in Florida. “It’s been like a fairy tale since the very beginning,” Amanda said. See photos from their engagement and wedding.
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“Pure joy from every single kid”
Kindergarten teacher Catie Corken wanted to involve her students in her nuptials, so she decided to wed her husband in a surprise ceremony in front of the entire school.
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Post of the Day
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@AttyCarolRN
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Today offers the perfect opportunity to bring this post back around. Just before Valentine’s Day in 2022, Carol Mack shared her unexpected, second-act love story. Life can be so strange — and wonderful. See her with her husband. (Photo Credit: @AttyCarolRN/ X)
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Quote of the Day
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| “Love gives us wings to soar above it all.”
- Sara Atzmon
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