Participants in a 1960 national longitudinal aptitude study for high school graduates in Madison, Wis., are now being asked to participate in a new study on aging and dementia, according to the Associated Press . The tests were circulated via Project Talent following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, their purpose to assess the "diversity of the American high school experience." Questionnaires were recently sent to 128 of 382 high school graduates from the classes of 1960-63. The researchers hope to detect factors that help prevent Alzheimer's disease by comparing the participants' test scores from nearly six decades ago to their current health status. "We have all of these very rich early life measures," says Project Talent's Susan Lapham. "Now we want to look at what are the adolescent predictors of later life outcomes." Lapham notes a possible connection between good reading skills in youth and a reduced risk of dementia in older age could encourage more educational emphasis on reading programs. "Early-life brain activity seems to be very important in being a protective factor against dementia," she says.

A study published in Clinical Interventions in Aging found "skinny fat" could help predict cognitive performance in older adults significantly, according to EurekAlert . The researchers used community-based aging and memory studies of 353 participants to evaluate how sarcopenic obesity or skinny fat correlated with performance on various cognition tests. They determined an association between skinny fat and the lowest performance on global cognition, followed by sarcopenia alone, and then obesity alone. Obesity and sarcopenia were tied to lower executive function such as working memory, mental flexibility, self-control, and orientation when evaluated separately and even more so when they occurred together. The linkage between sarcopenic obesity and poor global cognitive performance is best characterized by its sarcopenic component, with obesity likely having an additive impact that extends to specific cognitive skills. "Sarcopenia either alone or in the presence of obesity can be used in clinical practice to estimate potential risk of cognitive impairment," concludes Florida Atlantic University Professor Magdalena I. Tolea.

Companies from restaurants to financial firms are being forced to find new and creative ways to lure workers, and the competition for employees is playing out with lavish benefits, reports National Public Radio . Truck drivers are getting a $5,000 signing bonus to drive for Walmart. Kroger grocery baggers can get tuition reimbursed. New-mother baristas at Starbucks can now get their full salary for up to six weeks of maternity leave. A recent ManpowerGroup poll of companies found that 32 percent are offering additional perks and benefits to overcome shortages in talent. Turner, the media company, is trying to hire and retain data scientists and information security professionals with perks that include pet insurance, autism support, and egg-freezing assistance programs. A big reason for the shortage is a lack of applicants, while another is that those who do apply lack the experience or skills required for the open jobs.

The nation's tight labor market is squeezing out unpaid internships, reports the Wall Street Journal . With unemployment at record lows, more companies are paying for workers they used to get for free to ensure a pipeline of young entry-level talent. A National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) survey of 2017 college graduates reported almost 60 percent of respondents had an internship during their school years versus 49 percent in 2007. In 2012, around 50 percent of all internships were unpaid. Since that peak, unpaid internships have steadily declined to 43 percent last year. Unpaid internships have been widely criticized for taking advantage of free labor and catering to students who have the privilege to spend a summer or semester working for free while their parents foot the bill. The U.S. Labor Department this year issued new guidelines stipulating that an internship must provide an experience applicable to the student's education and that their work should not displace the work of a paid employee.

An American Psychological Association (APA) survey of more than 1,500 American full- or part-time workers found the de-stressing effects of vacations vanish once many employees return to work, reports HealthDay News . In addition, many respondents said they cannot relax and enjoy their time off at all. When they got back after a vacation, 68 percent of respondents said they were in a better mood, 66 percent had more energy, and 57 percent reported feeling more motivated and less stressed. The end result was that 58 percent said they were more productive, while 55 percent said their work improved. However, 40 percent said the vacation feeling disappeared within days, while 24 percent said it went away as soon as they returned to work. Moreover, 21 percent said they felt tense or stressed during their vacation, while 28 percent wound up working more than planned and 42 percent dreaded the thought of resuming work. "Employers shouldn't rely on the occasional vacation to offset a stressful work environment," says David Ballard with the APA's Center for Organizational Excellence. "Unless they address the organizational factors causing stress and promote ongoing stress-management efforts, the benefits of time off can be fleeting. When stress levels spike again shortly after employees return to work, that's bad for workers and for business." Top stressors named by respondents included low salaries, few opportunities for growth or advancement, a heavy workload, unrealistic job expectations, and long hours. "Chronic work stress, insufficient mental health resources, feeling overworked and under-supported — these are issues facing too many workers, but it doesn't have to be this way," Ballard concluded.

Courtney Smith with the Dallas, Texas-based Senior Source nonprofit agency says geriatric care managers can make a life-or-death difference for seniors and their families, reports the Dallas Morning News . Geriatric care managers function as guides and advocates for families caring for older relatives or disabled adults. They are specialized in aging and senior care, with diverse backgrounds that include nursing, gerontology, social work, and psychology. A care manager can assist families with finding a residential care center or lining up in-home care, accompany the senior to doctor appointments, or gently coax an individual that it is time to stop driving. They also help coordinate care for older adults with multiple health problems. "A lot of times there's denial, especially with seniors who have memory loss," notes Tina Lott of Caring With Grace in Dallas. "The family member who lives out of town may insist, 'Mom is fine,' but the sibling who lives here sees that Mom is actually living in a dirty house and missing her meds." A care manager can offer an objective assessment and recommendations. Overall, insurance does not cover the services of geriatric care managers, and free or lower-cost options for those in need of such services include the Senior Source and senior care adviser services.

A study published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests daily low doses of aspirin may help reduce the effects of Alzheimer's disease and protect memory, reports United Press International . The researchers demonstrated that aspirin shrinks amyloid plaque in the brain because it stimulates lysosomes, which help clear cellular debris. For one month, mice genetically modified to have Alzheimer's-like conditions were administered aspirin, and then were assessed for the amount of amyloid plaque in the parts of the brain most affected by the disease. The team discovered that the drug increased the waste removal regulator protein TFEB, stimulated lysosomes, and reduced amyloid plaque in the animals. "This research study adds another potential benefit to aspirin's already established uses for pain relief and for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases," says Rush Medical College Professor Kalipada Pahan. "More research needs to be completed, but the findings of our study has major potential implications for the therapeutic use of aspirin in AD and other dementia-related illnesses."

A study published in PLOS Medicine found that Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees spend less time in nursing communities after surgery and are less likely to go back to the hospitals compared with those in traditional Medicare, reports Modern Healthcare . The researchers determined MA enrollees spent five fewer days in skilled nursing communities on average and had 463 fewer minutes of rehabilitation therapy for hip fractures. MA enrollees also were less likely to go back to hospitals, less likely to become a long-term resident at a nursing community, and were more likely to remain in their communities after release from rehab compared to fee-for-service Medicare beneficiaries. "The results suggest that for hip fracture subjects who are otherwise healthy, longer lengths of stay in skilled nursing communities may not translate to better outcomes," says Brown University Professor Vincent Mor. The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission estimates that Medicare spending for skilled-nursing services in fiscal 2002 was $14.5 billion, about 5.6 percent of total Medicare spending. By 2016, that budget was $29.1 billion or roughly 8 percent of Medicare spending. The Brown team examined claims for 211,296 fee-for-service and 75,554 MA enrollees with hip fractures who moved directly into a skilled-nursing community following hospitalization from 2011 to 2015. The difference in length of stay at skilled-nursing communities and outcomes may be attributed to factors that include MA plans' narrow networks comprised of providers with high-quality scores and low spending habits. MA plans also have stronger care-management protocols in place, including case managers and nurse practitioners to monitor enrollees after they leave a hospital, and the study indicates this leads to preventable hospitalizations.

The finding that Alzheimer's especially is associated with a severe decline in navigational skills has prompted scientists to redesign environments using virtual reality (VR) and other modern methods to help people with dementia, reports The Guardian . "There's an overlap between the brain regions affected in the early stages of Alzheimer's and the areas important for spatial navigation, including the entorhinal cortex of the temporal lobe," says Bournemouth University's Jan Wiener. He thinks VR is perfect for the redesign, given the impracticality of building a care or residential setting, measuring how people with dementia perform, and then reworking it a few months later. "VR enables us to simulate unfamiliar home environments and then simply change features and structures systematically, whether it's the layout of corridors, the number of intersections, or the types of landmark," Wiener says. Experiments with virtual environments such as care communities have demonstrated that older participants are slower at learning routes than young adults, because they make more mistakes and require more repetitions. This also hints at the possibility that older adults use different strategies when they learn new routes, noting salient landmarks more than turns and intersections. Bournemouth's Vladislava Segen says gaze behavior also is helping such research. "Older healthy adults tend to make more use of external information, for instance windows and walls," he notes. "But younger participants tend to look at the spatial arrangements of objects within a room, as well as flicking back and forth to external cues."

A recent Cigna study on loneliness in America found many U.S. workers feel isolated in their job despite the availability of tools to "connect" with each other such as email, texting, Facebook, and Twitter, reports the Society for Human Resource Management . Cornell University's Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies says addressing employee loneliness has become a priority for Fortune 500 companies in the past 10 years, while a 2011 study determined "greater employee loneliness led to poorer task, team role, and relational performance," and that a worker's loneliness triggers emotional withdrawal from the organization. "Because modern technology can make so many demands on our time and energy, people become more selfish about the one-on-one time they give to others," says California State University Professor Hakan Ozcelik. He estimates that about 70 percent of face-to-face communication involves reading nonverbal cues to help clarify what a person is actually saying. "Sending an email about a work-related topic might be more convenient .. but when employees refrain from face-to-face communication, especially at times when they need to read and interpret each other's nonverbal cues, they put themselves in a communication process that is deprived of some crucial messages they need" to create strong relationships, Ozcelik notes. The Cigna study found 89 percent of respondents who said they had "good," "very good," or "excellent" relationships with coworkers were also in "good," "very good," or "excellent" health; just 65 percent of those who reported having "fair" or "poor" relationships with coworkers were in similarly good health. HR representatives ought to regularly remind employees of the resources available to those who may be struggling with loneliness or other mental health issues.