A bus company in China has launched a new “safe driving” campaign by suspending bowls of water over their drivers. To avoid getting wet, drivers must drive gently. In today’s technology-obsessed world, this solution is elegantly primitive. You might imagine that this simple yet ingenious idea was conjured by someone functioning at their very best, that such “aha insights” come when innovators are at their peak.

Not so. A recent study by Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks suggests that innovation and creativity are greatest when we are not at our best, at least with respect to our circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms determine whether you are a “morning-type” person or an “evening-type” person, and are often measured with a short paper-and-pencil test called the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire. Circadian rhythms drive daily fluctuations in many physiological processes like alertness, heart rate and body temperature. Recent research indicates that these rhythms affect our intellectual functioning too.

Numerous studieshave demonstrated that our best performance on challenging, attention-demanding tasks - like studying in the midst of distraction - occurs at our peak time of day. When we operate at our optimal time of day, we filter out the distractions in our world and get down to business.

In a study I conducted, for example, participants were given three related cue words (e.g., SHIP OUTER CRAWL), and were required to find their common link (SPACE). When misleading distractors were presented with the cue words (e.g., SHIP-ocean OUTER-inner CRAWL-baby), those tested at non-optimal times were more likely to be misled by the distractors and showed lower solution rates. Those tested at peak times were not affected by the distraction. In this and related studies, peak-time benefits are most robust when distraction would disrupt our thought processes and cause errors.

But distraction is not all bad, and Wieth and Zacks have demonstrated that we can use our increased susceptibility to distraction at off-peak times to our advantage. In their study, they asked participants to solve analytic problems and insight problems at peak or off-peak times. Analytic problems generally require people to “grind out a solution” by systematically working through the problem utilizing a consistent strategy. Here is a classic analytic problem: “Bob’s father is 3 times as old as Bob. They were both born in October. 4 years ago, he was 4 times older. How old are Bob and his father?” No innovation or creativity necessary to solve this problem; one simply has to work it out mathematically.

Like many of you, we heard the sad news about Amy Winehouse's death on Facebook. The news spread quickly. Her friend Russell Brand immediately issued an incredible tribute to her, which was one of the most widely discussed responses to her sudden death. Most people immediately assumed that a drug overdose must have taken Amy's life. We don't know how she died, and on some level, it doesn't really matter. She was young, talented and apparently haunted with struggles none of us will ever understand. She used drugs. And now she's gone.

We have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance for many years and spend most days thinking about drugs, our country's drug policies and the people whose lives are impacted by them. We spend most days advocating for, and trying to help, people just like Amy. Here are some of our reflections on the tragic death of Amy Winehouse.

Relapse Happens.

Abstinence isn't always achievable for everyone. We know some people will fall short of this goal, despite everyone wanting to see them succeed. Even people with virtually unlimited resources and support, like Amy Winehouse, will sometimes fail to live up to their own hopes for sobriety. We need as many potential solutions on the table as possible, including things that reduce the risks of accidental fatal overdose, like the overdose reversal medication naloxone and physician-monitored prescribed heroin maintenance programs. Amy's drug use and struggles with addiction have been in the news for years. She was in treatment as recently as May. Unfortunately, treatment is not a silver bullet and relapse is a common, and frustrating, part of recovery.

There's an Overdose Crisis in the United States and Abroad.

People usually hear about overdose when it happens to a celebrity like Heath Ledger or Chris Farley. Yet overdose is a silent killer that has quickly become one of the leading causes of accidental death in the United States. Nationally, over 27,000 people died from accidental overdoses in 2007 (the most recent data available). In NY and 16 other states, overdose is now the leading cause of accidental death, even passing car fatalities. More Americans now die from an accidental drug overdose than from HIV/AIDS.

That's the bad news. The good news is that most drug overdoses are preventable. Solutions to the crisis exist; cost-neutral and cost-effective measures such as Good Samaritan 911 laws and expanded access to the lifesaving overdose reversal medication naloxone help reduce overdose deaths.

Just last week, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York signed a Good Samaritan 911 bill that will save thousands of lives. The bill will help reduce overdose death by allowing people who are witnessing an overdose to call 911 without fear of being prosecuted. New York now joins states like New Mexico and Washington in passing these laws, but we need these laws in every state.

People Need Better Access to Effective Treatment

We need to invest in better and more widely available drug treatment. Many people would be shocked to discover that there's virtually nowhere left in the United States where a person addicted to heroin can call and be admitted that same day to a long-term in-patient drug treatment program free of charge. We need to eliminate these barriers to addiction treatment.

The average weight of a newborn baby is about 7 1/2 pounds, which is why it's shocking -- even in Texas -- that a woman has given birth to a 16-pound baby boy.

Two feet tall at birth, JaMichael Brown is the biggest baby ever born in the state of Texas.

"A lot of the stuff we bought him is too little," mother Janet Johnson told The Today Show.

The nurse who helped deliver JaMichael said there are health implications for an infant this large.

The medical term for large infants is "macrosomia," literally meaning "large of body." These babies often have high blood sugar at birth, and a greater chance of obesity or diabetes later in life, doctors say.

How big is possible cause for concern? According to Babycenter.com, over 9 pounds and 15 ounces is considered "much larger than average."

From Babycenter:

Probably the most influential factors are genetics and unmanaged high blood sugar levels from gestational diabetes or diabetes mellitus. Other factors believed to increase risk include ethnicity (Hispanic women are more at risk), obesity, gaining a lot of weight during pregnancy, going past your due date, and even your baby's sex -- male babies are more often than females.

Many people know the term 'bunion' and that it occurs on a foot, but don't know exactly what a bunion is. Most people think a bunion is an abnormal growth of bone at the base of the big toe. This is incorrect (at least in most cases). A bunion is actually a structural problem where the big toe joint becomes subluxed and drifts towards the smaller toes. A displaced bone, called a metatarsal, becomes prominent on the inside of the foot. The bunion simply refers to the enlarged prominent 'knobby' area.


Bunions may progress in size and severity. A bunion may start of as minor issue and, over time, may develop into a severe disfiguring foot deformity. See below:


So if you have bunion, here are 10 important things you should know, as you consider treatment:

1. Not all bunions are painful.
2. The medical term is hallux abducto valgus.
3. They come in different sizes: small, medium, large or severe.
4. Genetics. You may have inherited your grandmothers feet.
5. They occur more often in women than men.
6. Pointy-toed shoes and high heels may result in bunions.
7. Bunions may get bigger over time, or not.
8. The bunion may cause problems with the lesser toes.
9. Non-operative treatments are mostly aimed at treating the symptoms.
10. Surgical treatment goals are to realign the natural position of the toe.

When to seek treatment?
There is not a specific point when bunion sufferers 'must' start treatment despite the bunion severity. Some people begin treatment with the smallest bunion while others neglect the condition until severe. Reasons to seek medical treatment are: