There are two things that great managers know and leverage to build engagement in their teams and minimize turnover: who they have to return to and what they have to return to, writes leadership team coach Jeff Boss in Forbes . "Managers ... help employees want to show up — and stay — because they already understand what drives that employee (assuming there has been an ongoing dialogue between the two)," he notes. To reduce employee turnover, Boss suggests first prioritizing team functioning. "People want to be part of something great; they want to belong to something and work alongside like-minded individuals whom they like, trust and respect," he says. "It's incumbent upon the manager to set the conditions that allow for such successes to occur." Holding candid conversations with employees is another recommendation from Boss. "Conversations don't have to be difficult," he says. "They can — and should — be exploratory when you use questioning to your advantage."

Older adults considering high-tech careers must not be discouraged by self-doubt or employer skepticism, reports the New York Times . Some older adults are debunking stereotypical perceptions in certain professions — often-part time or done remotely, with flexible schedules — that do not demand an advanced degree in computer science or years of experience, but do involve some digital competence. "That's an important distinction," notes FlexJobs CEO Sara Sutton Fell. "These are really viable professional opportunities, especially for retirees." One example of this is William Jones, 55, who began by working in mainframes for a credit card company in the U.K. in the 1980s. In 2005, Jones and his wife purchased a 76-acre farm in rural Virginia, where they raised free-range pigs. When his children grew older, Jones decided to return to the tech world, and took an online Web development course at the Flatiron School in New York City. "I thought technically I could pick it up," he says. "But I didn't think many employers would be interested in someone in their mid-50s." After completing the course last year, Jones landed a job in Web development for the D'Artagnan food company. Regardless of experience, Jones believes many older adults can acquire the skills needed for his job. "Intellectually, there's no reason someone my age couldn't be doing this," he contends.

A review of qualitative studies published in PLOS One found stroke survivors and their caregivers often feel ignored by primary care and community healthcare services, frustrated by little follow-up, and not ready to manage recovery by themselves, reports Cardiovascular Business . The researchers analyzed responses from 51 studies from the U.K., North America, Australia, Scandinavia, and Iran that included 168 stroke survivors and 328 informal caregivers. Grievances the authors cited included long wait time for rehabilitation and difficulty to access credible, appropriate information regarding stroke self-care. Emotional support was found to be vital to both survivors and caregivers, with the latter feeling particularly unprepared and pressured to "become experts" in stroke care. "The need for training was repeatedly emphasized," the researchers said. "Caregivers wanted insights into how to cope, how to get organized, and establish a routine after discharge. Many also wanted back-up and respite services. Lack of support was highlighted as a barrier to undertaking and/or continuing the caregiving role." Study co-author Lisa Lim at the University of Cambridge stressed a need for "mechanisms to encourage better communication and collaboration between generalist services, which tend to provide the longer-term care after stroke, and specialist services, which provide the care in the immediate phase post-stroke."

The Indiana chapter of the Alzheimer's Association partnered with the Indianapolis-based Dance Kaleidoscope troupe to offer a recent performance of dances interpreting the stories of people with Alzheimer's served by the association's early-stage programs, reports Associations Now . Dance Kaleidoscope Education Director Lynn Webster saw a collaborative opportunity with the association after observing that the group brought people in the early stage of the disease to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. "Our folks are keen to share their stories, but as they have memory loss, it becomes more important for them to feel they're validated and heard," says the Alzheimer's Association's Maria Holmes. "In some ways, it becomes really important to them to get their ideas, thoughts, and stories down on paper, but then to have it interpreted into dance is just completely unique." The project also was an opportunity for the subjects and their families, who saw a positive creative outlet for their loved ones. "Just because you're going through this awful disease, you don't have to do it alone," says dancer Stuart Coleman.

A new report from the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) estimates that most millennials are not saving enough for retirement, and 66.2 percent of working millennials have nothing saved. Meanwhile, about 83 percent of Latino millennials have nothing saved. Only a little more than 33 percent of this generation participates in employer-sponsored plans even though 66 percent work for companies offering retirement plans. The eligibility requirements set by employers, which keep 45 percent of working millennials out of plans, drives this coverage chasm rather than workers opting not to save for retirement. "Financial experts recommend that millennials set aside 15 percent or more of their salary for retirement, which is a much higher rule of thumb than recommendations for previous generations," says NIRS' Jennifer Brown. "But we find that millennials' average retirement savings rate, including employers' matching contributions, is 10 percent of their salary." Millennials face higher life expectancy and lower income replacement from Social Security, and are less likely to have a traditional defined benefit pension. This requires them to save significantly more than previous generations to maintain their standard of living in retirement. NIRS recommends improving millennials' retirement prospects in a number of ways, such as by expanding defined contribution plan eligibility for part-time employees, reducing waiting periods for workers to qualify for employer-sponsored plans, boosting auto-enrollment, raising employer matches and default contribution rates, supplying education to increase awareness of the benefits of employer matches, promoting and educating millennials about the Savers Credit, and safeguarding and bolstering Social Security.

A study published in JAMA Neurology indicates that the closer a person gets to the age at which their parent exhibited the first symptoms of Alzheimer's, the more likely they are to have amyloid plaques in their brain, reports ScienceDaily . The researchers examined a cohort of 101 people and determined that a 60-year-old whose mother developed Alzheimer's at age 63 would be more likely to have amyloid plaques in their brain than a 70-year-old whose mother developed the disease at 85. "Upon examining changes in the amyloid biomarker in the cerebrospinal fluid samples from our subjects, we noticed that this link between parental age and amyloid deposits is stronger in women than in men," says McGill University Professor Sylvia Villeneuve. "The link is also stronger in carriers of the ApoE4 gene, the so-called 'Alzheimer's gene.'" The study results were successfully replicated in two independent groups: one of 128 individuals from a University of Washington-St. Louis cohort, and another of 135 individuals from a University of Wisconsin-Madison cohort. In addition, the team reproduced their results with an imaging method that allows visualization of amyloid plaques in the brains of living persons. The study also is clearing a way for the development of more affordable techniques for the early identification of people at risk for Alzheimer's disease.

Blogger Ronni Bennett, 76, is currently writing about getting older while living with pancreatic cancer, reports Next Avenue . "I didn't want to be defined by the disease or have my life taken up with medical issues, but there's no other way to treat this type of cancer," Bennett says. She notes she has a desire to "live consciously" with the disease and her treatment for it. "I don't want all my time spent on this cancer," Bennett says. "Other things are still important. They didn't become less important in the world because of my diagnosis." Bennett also says she has been writing about aging for a long time, "and this is the normal way of life. It's as it should be."

Startups targeting the senior caregiver market are burgeoning, with finalists in the Aging Startup Challenge in Minneapolis particularly praiseworthy, reports Forbes . The finalists were fledging ventures with results driven largely from small test markets. Their business models show potential, but scaling up a business is always difficult. The San Francisco-based Golden: Financial Care for Your Parents targets adult children caregivers assuming their parents' finances after a health-related setback. The parents usually live off a fixed income and Golden seeks to increase household income. Golden's offerings include helping to gather a parent's finances in one place for online monitoring, identifying care payment options and potential government benefits, suggesting how to reduce expenses, and establishing a bill-paying calendar. Another notable finalist is Tending, an online care coordination platform and concierge service for caregivers that also is headquartered in San Francisco. The startup partners with hospitals, physician groups, and insurers to offer care coordination, and its average customer's age is 85. Its revenue is derived not only from consumer fees, but also from hospitals, medical groups, and insurers. Iris Plans of Austin, Texas, is a technology-enabled, advanced planning service focused on seniors with serious illnesses. The startup uses healthcare professionals to guide families through their future healthcare options, and remote family members join the conversation through video. The service is covered via partnerships with healthcare providers and health insurers.

Researchers at the University of Virginia (UVA) have made a discovery about the immune system that could let doctors treat harmful inflammation that damages the brain in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, reports ScienceDaily . The discovery also might allow doctors to save people from the potentially deadly inflammation of sepsis. "A lot of the drugs we use right now to treat inflammation, known as biologicals, don't work in the brain because they can't get through the blood-brain barrier," notes UVA's Bimal Desai. His team has identified an ion channel within macrophages that governs the flow of calcium into cells. By targeting this ion channel with tiny molecules, researchers could deny the macrophages calcium and prevent inflammation, even in the brain. "Small molecules are perhaps more affordable as treatments and can hit things like this ion channel switch, TRPM7," says UVA's Michael Schappe. "We could use that to address inflammation in a bunch of contexts, but particularly in instances like neuroinflammation, where current treatments are particularly ineffective." Desai points out that drugmakers are currently developing medications that could target this type of channel. "Having identified an ion channel ... allows you to use small molecules, which are ridiculously cheap compared to biologicals and can be taken orally," he says.

A study of more than 7,800 middle-aged and senior twins in Denmark published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology did not find an association between long-term use of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and cognitive decline, reports Healio . "Follow-up data on more than 4,000 of these twins did not indicate that use of this class of drugs was correlated to cognitive decline," the researchers note. "These findings were supported by results of within pairs analyses of twins discordant for cognitive scores (baseline) or cognitive decline (follow-up)." Twins in the older cohort who consumed high levels of PPIs exhibited higher adjusted cognitive scores than non-users, and a lower adjusted mean difference between baseline and follow-up scores than non-users. Still, none of the differences in cognitive scores between PPI users and non-users were statistically significant. "As the cohorts were recruited among Danish twins, we also investigated the association between PPI use and cognition among twin-pairs discordant with regard to cognitive decline — a powerful design to study the effects of non-genetic and non-common environment exposures," the researchers say. PPI exposure revealed no correlation with differences in cognitive scores among twin pairs, while post hoc analysis found no association between H2RA use and cognitive decline. "The magnitude of estimates did not indicate any important association with cognitive function as measured through the composite score, and none of our adjusted estimates reported a statistically significant effect in the longitudinal analyses," the team notes. "In addition, there did not seem to be a clear dose-response effect in any analyses."