Education has no age limit! (New York Times: Older Students Learn for the Sake of Learning).

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/02/your-money/older-students-learn-for-the-sake-of-learning.html

Great article, a very interesting and unique way to keep your brain active in retirement.

Wishing everyone a wonderful and prosperous 2016! (New Year’s 2016: 15 Quotes About New Beginnings To Inspire You).

http://www.ibtimes.com/new-years-2016-15-quotes-about-new-beginnings-inspire-you-2233270

Interesting story, and a great idea to give young adults business experience. (For teen-driven Minnesota bakery, expansion is icing on the cake).

Always good to hear about young people gaining knowledge about the business world.
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/12/17/cookie-cart-teen-nonprofit-bakery-expands-stpaul

Hopefully this will change soon! (Clinical trials still don't reflect the diversity of America)

Hopefully the clinical trials will better reflect the diversity in America soon.

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/12/16/npr-clinical-trials-lack-america-diversity-study-health

Always good to hear about job growth in Minnesota, +7,200 jobs in November!

Interesting Star Tribune article about job growth in Minnesota in November.
http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-adds-7-200-jobs-in-november/362802061/

Good News! (Health care enrollment grows by 1 million)

Interesting article showing the increased enrollment of Americans in the health care system. Take a look!
http://www.startribune.com/health-care-enrollment-grows-by-1-million/361355071/

Even after a raise it's important to manage your money! (Five moves to make after getting a raise)

Five moves to make after getting a raise

November 21, 2015 — 2:30pm

 

 

 

The average worker can expect about a 3 percent pay raise this year, according to a survey by Mercer. Getting a raise is only half the battle. Knowing what to do with it is the other half. Here are five moves to consider to make the most of your extra income:

Go 50-50

 

There’s nothing wrong with spending some of your raise. Aim for a 50-50 split: half goes toward discretionary spending, the other half goes toward reaching a long-term financial goal of reducing debt or bolstering retirement savings.

Aim higher if you can

 

If you don’t want to use 50 percent of your pay raise to go wild, that’s OK! If you can do more than a 50-50 split, the faster you can achieve those key objectives of paring debt, building a cushion and shoring up your retirement.

Pay off debt

 

Often people maintain a credit card balance that they can’t quite pay off. It’s a big drag on your finances. When you’re looking to make progress in your financial life, the biggest impact can generally be found by paying off that high-interest debt.

Create emergency fund

 

If you don’t carry credit card debt, or you’ve already paid it off, the next place to park your salary raise is in your emergency savings fund. Savers should strive to sock away between three and six months’ worth of living expenses.

 

Pad your 401(k)

 

Once you’ve established your emergency fund, it’s time to target retirement savings. If the option exists, take advantage of an employer-sponsored retirement account that offers a match.

GOBankingRates.com

Interesting article!

Light therapy may ease depression, not just winter blues

                   

By Lisa Rapaport November 19, 2015 2:16 PM

 

 

(Reuters Health) - Light therapy, long used to help improve mood in people who get the blues when days are darker and shorter, can also treat non-seasonal depression, a small Canadian study suggests.
Depression is one of the most common mental health disorders and a leading cause of disability and reduced quality of life worldwide, the researchers note in JAMA Psychiatry.

While many people with depression may be helped by medication or psychotherapy, these options don’t work for everybody and some patients don’t stick with treatment due to side effects or challenges related to access or affordability.

“This study is the first to show that light therapy alone is effective versus a placebo, and the first to compare combination light and drug to light alone,” said lead study author Dr. Raymond Lam of the University of British Columbia.

“The combination of light therapy and antidepressant was the most effective,” Lam added by email. “However, some people may prefer to try a non-medication treatment first, and may elect to start with light therapy.”

To test the effectiveness of light therapy for non-seasonal depression, Lam and colleagues randomly assigned 122 patients to one of four groups for eight weeks: only medication, only light, a combination of drugs and light therapy, or a control group that received no active treatments.

The active treatments in the study included a daily 20-milligram dose of fluoxetine (Prozac) and daily exposure to a fluorescent light box for 30 minutes after waking up each morning.

Researchers gave people assigned only light therapy a placebo, or inactive pill, and they provided participants assigned only to drug treatment with an inactive device instead of a working light box. The control group received both the placebo pill and the inactive device.

At the start of the study, researchers used a standard questionnaire to assess the severity of depression by asking participants about sadness, inner tension, reduced sleep, reduced appetite, concentration difficulties, lack of energy, inability to feel, and pessimistic or suicidal thoughts.

The highest score is 60, indicating the most severe depression. On average, participants had scores of about 26 or 27 at the start of the study, pointing to moderate depression.

After eight weeks, the group receiving both medication and light therapy had the biggest average drop in depression scores, with a 16.9 point decline.

People who got only light therapy had an average 13.4 point decline in depression scores, while people who had only medication experienced an 8.8 point drop and the control group getting only inactive treatments had a 6.5 point decrease.

While the exact reason light therapy might ease depression is unknown, it may have worked by helping to reset the biological clock in the brain, or circadian rhythms, the researchers hypothesized.
One shortcoming of the study is that researchers lacked data on how much exposure people had to natural light during the study, the authors acknowledge. It’s also possible that a higher dose of medication or light therapy might have made a bigger impact.

Normally, if an antidepressant doesn’t work in a low dose, clinicians will gradually increase the dose to help achieve the right amount of medicine to ease symptoms, noted Dr. Teodor Postolache, a psychiatry researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Light treatment could be an adequate agent that in combination with medications may make the response to treatment more complete,” Postolache said by email. “However, I would emphasize that patients should not buy a light treatment device and start adding it to their antidepressants on their own.”

The best time in the course of treatment to consider light therapy may also depend on the severity of symptoms, said Sue Penckofer, a researcher at Loyola University in Chicago who wasn’t involved in the study.

“If somebody has more mild depression they might try light therapy first, but if they have more moderate or serious depression medication might be recommended instead,” Penckofer said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1MppYER JAMA Psychiatry, online November 18, 2015.

Good turnout!

Mergers & Acquisitions conference in Minneapolis draws record turnout

 

 

M&A conference draws record turnout

 

“A year from now, we are going to call 2014 and 2015 the golden age of M&A.”

 

That’s the word from Sima Griffith, managing principal for Minneapolis-based ­Aethlon Capital, who has been raising capital and completing mergers and acquisitions for more than 25 years. She made the comment while attending law firm Faegre Baker Daniels’ 10th annual mergers and acquisitions conference Wednesday at the Marriott City Center.

 

The event is one of the premier M&A conferences in the country. This year, the conference drew nearly 450 attendees, its biggest turnout ever, with participants coming from as far away as China, Germany, Canada and London.

 

Featured were 10 panel discussions ranging from case studies on natural and organics food company acquisitions, including the General Mills/Annie’s and Hormel Foods/Applegate deals, to H.B. Fuller’s transformational $230 million deal involving China’s Tonsan Adhesives. The agenda also included breakout discussions on such topics as current deal activity.

 

Much of the discussion around the food deals was how much thought the big companies put into preserving the culture of the mission-driven companies they acquired, described by one General Mills executive as bringing “the power of the big to the small.”

 

One takeaway from the H.B. Fuller session was the importance of face-to-face negotiations, especially when the market has dictated that deals get done faster than ever with fewer and fewer in-person meetings.

 

One topic that arose early and was repeated consistently throughout the day’s sessions is that it remains a seller’s market in M&A. While it remains prime-time to be a quality seller in this market, the end may be in sight.

 

The first panel concluded with predictions of what 2016 will bring. How far and how fast M&A activity slides from peak activity will depend in large part on private equity firms and increasingly family offices that have been key contributors to this golden age of M&A activity.

 

Private equity firms now own about 10,000 companies, and family offices at investment banks have become increasingly aggressive in making deals.

 

Private equity firms have on average held their companies for five to six years, but those holding periods have been coming down. Some panel members told anecdotes about the firms flipping investments in as little as 18 months.

 

Meanwhile, family offices have been winning bids by selling themselves as longer-term investors, panelists said.

Patrick Kennedy

Earth Journal

How the world's 20 largest economies help, and hinder, climate protection

By Ron Meador | 11/13/15

REUTERS

Collectively the G20 contributes about 85 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, conducts 80 percent of overall world trade, contains 64 percent of the world’s population – and, according to the report, creates 74 percent of global GHG output.

      

Just ahead of the G20 summit in Turkey that begins on Sunday, two new reports paint intriguing – and very different – pictures of how the world’s largest economies are acting on global warming.
From Climate Transparency comes a finding that “climate action by the G20 has reached a turning point, with per capita emissions falling in 11 members, and renewable energy growing strongly” in 15.

Moreover, its analysis concludes that “there are strong indications that total global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have stopped rising in 2014, the first such reversal in annual emissions growth in the industrial era, aside from periods of serious economic crisis.”

G20 performance is significant because the roster of the 19 member nations plus the European Union are a close if not exact match with a list of the world’s largest producers of greenhouse gases.
Collectively the G20 contributes about 85 percent of the world’s gross domestic product, conducts 80 percent of overall world trade, contains 64 percent of the world’s population – and, according to the report, creates 74 percent of global GHG output.

Their governments also provided, according to the other new analysis, subsidies for fossil-fuel production averaging $452 billion in 2013 and 2014 – or about four times the amount of production subsidies paid by all countries of the world to support expansion of renewable alternatives.
In 2009, the G20 leaders pledged to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies. But a review of performance data by the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Oil Change International concludes that these were empty promises:

Their continued support for fossil fuel production marries bad economics with potentially disastrous consequences for the climate. In effect, governments are propping up the production of oil, gas and coal, most of which can never be used if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. It is tantamount to G20 governments allowing fossil fuel producers to undermine national climate commitments, while paying them for the privilege.

Relying on the World Trade Organization’s definitions of subsidy, the ODI analysis found:

• $78 billion in national subsidies delivered through direct spending and tax breaks.
• $88 billion in public finance from state-owned banks and financial institutions.
• $286 billion in investments by other state-owned business enterprises

Measuring policy results

Of the three organizations, Climate Transparency is a newer initiative and the least overtly activist in terms of a policy agenda. It was formed in 2014 as “an open consortium of organizations and initiatives with a shared mission to enhance assessments of action on climate change” and communicate “a comprehensive and picture of climate action for key influencers and decision makers.”

A principal source for this analysis was the Climate Action Tracker, a partnership of four research organizations that gathers performance data and assesses progress in 32 countries, responsible for about 80 percent of all global emissions, against the goal of holding global warming below the 2° Celsius target.

Climate Transparency’s declaration of a “turning point” begins with a trend line over the past 25 years in which global CO2 increased by 50 percent, with the trend line accelerating in the latter half of that period. Per capita emission rates were lower, because population grew faster than fossil fuel consumption, but still rose by 18 percent over the quarter-century.

Drawing on International Energy Agency data for 2007-2012, Climate Transparency found that per capita carbon emissions declined in the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, Britain, South Africa, Italy, France and Mexico, as well as in the EU as a whole; they continued to increase in China and India – the most populous member nations – as well as in Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Russia, Argentina, Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia.

Where emissions are declining, Climate Transparency attributes the change in this way:

Renewable energy is continuing its strong growth worldwide. Costs have fallen sharply, and parity with traditional forms of energy is in sight, or already reached. Renewable energy sources are also helping to bring power to the millions of people who do not have access to electricity, where off grid renewable power can be installed faster and cheaper than a grid connection.
Climate legislation has been introduced in many countries and targets have been strengthened over time. Increasingly, there is knowledge sharing and collaboration over policies to promote renewable power, energy efficiency and carbon pricing. A substantial number of countries and regions have introduced carbon markets. Climate mitigation action is increasingly seen not as a cost, but a necessary investment in the future, which brings multiple other benefits.

Progress is not yet occurring fast enough to head off a global temperature rise above the 2° C danger mark, the report says; current per capita emissions worldwide average about 11 tons of CO2 equivalent per year, and that number needs to fall into the one- to three-ton range by 2050.
Still, it notes one more encouraging sign:

An important demonstration of the cumulative effect of these developments is that according to the International Energy Agency energy related emissions did not grow in 2014. Such a reversal of GHG emissions growth was previously seen only during periods of economic downturn. This time, it seems that climate policy is working. More ambition is needed, but there is room for hope and optimism.

Following the money

Although ODI and Oil Change International focused their analysis on the G20’s performance on fossil-fuel subsidies, the policy issues they emphasize are less about this weekend’s summit than the climate treaty talks in Paris that begin Nov. 30.

Claiming that its work “documents, for the first time, the scale and structure of fossil fuel production subsidies and the G20 countries,” the groups say the nearly half-trillion-dollar aggregate “supports a lose-lose scenario” that “calls into question the commitment of governments to an ambitious deal on climate change.”

They are pouring large amounts of finance into uneconomic, high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without driving the planet far beyond the internationally agreed target of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2° C. At the same time, they are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power… .
Several countries have scaled up their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but continued subsidies for fossil fuel production raise serious concerns about these pledges and could undermine the prospects for an ambitious climate deal. As well as phasing out national subsidies, G20 governments have a tremendous opportunity to meet the climate challenge by shifting the investment of state-owned enterprises and public finance away from fossil fuel production, towards clean energy.

In the United States, the analysis counts “more than $20 billion in national fossil fuel production subsidies each year, despite calls from President Barack Obama to eliminate industry tax breaks.”
For comparison, it found $23 billion in direct subsidies by Russia, $9 billion by the UK, $5 billion by Australia and Brazil, and $3 billion in China.

However, additional payments by state-owned companies and banks often dwarfed those amounts: $50 billion for Russia, $42 billion for Brazil, and a whopping $77 billion for China.
In the aggregate, the report found that G20 nations provide $78 billion in national subsidies, $88 billion in public finance, and $286 billion in investment by state-owned enterprises to fossil-fuel producers.
One more discouraging snapshot: In the coal sector alone, the analysis found that producers in G20 member nations got almost twice as much public support as private investment — $19 billion versus $10 billion.

Good insight into the future impacts of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Alzheimer's: A Disease On Track to Bankrupt Medicare

by CNBC.com

     

Leading Alzheimer's researchers are optimistic that effective treatments to significantly slow or even halt the symptoms of this agonizing and ultimately fatal disease will be available within the next five years.

The hope springs from important breakthroughs on several fronts. Advances in high-powered imaging through PET (positron emission tomography) scans are giving researchers better diagnostic tools with which to view the brain. And a renewed interest in different brain proteins is providing greater clues as to which ones are responsible for kick-starting this devastating disease in the first place.

These discoveries have led to a flurry of clinical trials and studies now under way, and that's good news for Alzheimer's patients. Researchers say the work being done today could bring about a host of new drugs to treat the disease better and more effectively than anything currently on the market. These new therapies could potentially stop the progression of the disease before symptoms, like memory loss and confusion, ever start — something that's not possible with the drugs now being prescribed.

Says Dr. Marc Diamond, founding director of the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern and one of the leading voices on Alzheimer's research: "It's an incredibly exciting time right now."

A devastating disease

To truly understand just how catastrophic an illness Alzheimer's is, consider that it is the only cause of death among the top 10 in the U.S. that can't yet be prevented, cured or even slowed. Someone diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or even HIV/AIDS has a better chance of surviving — and having a better quality of life while battling the disease — than a person diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, there are now 5.3 million Americans age 65 and older living with the disease. The total direct cost to the U.S. economy of caring for those with Alzheimer's: a staggering $226 billion, with half being borne by Medicare.

Delaying the onset of the disease by just five years, research studies show, could decrease Medicare spending by 50 percent. That's an important point to consider, because economists forecast that unless something is done to cure or even slow the symptoms, the number of people with Alzheimer's will rise to 16 million by 2050 and cost the U.S. economy $1.1 trillion. The portion covered by Medicare will balloon to $589 billion.

Closer to home, the financial burden of caring for someone with Alzheimer's can be devastating. According to a recent study by the Annals of Internal Medicine, the cost of caring for a person with Alzheimer's in the last five years of life is $287,038.

That's far higher than the costs incurred for a person who died from cancer or heart disease. The reason: Alzheimer's patients need the kind of care at the end of their lives — bathing, dressing and eating — that's not covered by insurance. This puts a tremendous burden on a spouse or, in many cases, adult children who may be trying to save for their own retirement or have college tuitions to pay.

"This is clearly the underfunded and understudied problem of the 21st century."

One point that all the experts we spoke with agree on is that federal funding for Alzheimer's research needs to increase — and soon. Currently, just under $1 billion a year is allocated for Alzheimer's research. That's far less than the $5 billion spent on cancer or the $3 billion on HIV/AIDS research, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

"This is clearly the underfunded and understudied problem of the 21st century," says Dr. Bruce Miller, director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco. "We've made a lot of progress in therapies around heart disease, cancer and stroke, and we need to move faster in Alzheimer's research. If we can't find better therapies for an aging brain, as a society we will dramatically suffer."

A lack of effective drugs

The FDA-approved drugs now on the market and most widely prescribed to treat Alzheimer's — Aricept and Namenda — are helpful but limited, doctors say. "What's available now are symptomatic treatments that simply give a patient maybe six to 12 months of doing just a little bit better," says Dr. Reisa Sperling, a leading Alzheimer's researcher and professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Even the newest drug on the market — Namzaric — is basically a combination of two existing drugs and claims only to slow the worsening of symptoms for a while. Like Aricept and Namenda, Namzaric has no effect on stopping or preventing the underlying disease.

But now it seems like the focus — and promise — of Alzheimer's research is beginning to shift. For the past two decades the main target in research has been an influential brain protein called beta-amyloid. Over time this protein can build up outside the brain's neurons and form what's known as amyloid plaque. The hypothesis for decades has been that it's this plaque buildup that ultimately leads to Alzheimer's in certain patients.

As a result, the overwhelming focus in the field has been on beta-amyloid. "For the past 15 or 20 years, if a researcher was not studying beta-amyloid, the chances of getting funding or grant money was quite low," says Dr. Jim Sullivan, vice president of discovery for AbbVie, a pharmaceutical company involved in Alzheimer's research.

The problem with this singular approach is that, in patients with moderate to severe Alzheimer's symptoms, lowering beta-amyloid levels does not make a difference in the severity of the disease or its progression. Further complicating the picture is the fact that, thanks to the brain images now possible with PET scans, it has been proved that individuals can have significant levels of amyloid in their brain and not show signs of Alzheimer's or any other type of dementia.

Leading Alzheimer's researchers are optimistic that effective treatments to significantly slow or even halt the symptoms of this agonizing and ultimately fatal disease will be available within the next five years.

The hope springs from important breakthroughs on several fronts. Advances in high-powered imaging through PET (positron emission tomography) scans are giving researchers better diagnostic tools with which to view the brain. And a renewed interest in different brain proteins is providing greater clues as to which ones are responsible for kick-starting this devastating disease in the first place.

These discoveries have led to a flurry of clinical trials and studies now under way, and that's good news for Alzheimer's patients. Researchers say the work being done today could bring about a host of new drugs to treat the disease better and more effectively than anything currently on the market. These new therapies could potentially stop the progression of the disease before symptoms, like memory loss and confusion, ever start — something that's not possible with the drugs now being prescribed.

 

These findings have ignited renewed interest in other cognitive culprits; chief among them is another brain protein, called tau. Unlike beta-amyloid, which forms and builds up outside the neurons in the brain, tau develops inside the neurons. From there it can do its damage by traveling to neighboring cells and acting as a sort of virus that corrupts the normal protein of these other cells. For this reason, researchers believe tau may play an even more direct and influential role than beta-amyloid in the development of Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

Diamond of the University of Texas describes the relationship between these two proteins this way: "If [beta-amyloid] unlocks the barn door and let's the tau out, then tau is the horse that goes running off," he says. "It's the progression of tau as it moves through your brain that actually causes Alzheimer's dementia, but it's the [beta-amyloid] that sets you up to get that pathology."

Alzheimer's drugs on horizon: How do they work?

Searching for a better treatment

If the past several decades were focused on developing drugs that might improve life for patients with symptoms of Alzheimer's, current research is all about arresting — or even preventing — the disease before the first symptoms ever appear. Says Miller of UC San Francisco: "We know now that prevention of this disease is feasible and something our field will conquer."

In other diseases, such as certain types of cancer or heart disease, genetic screenings are often the first line of defense. However, that approach is hotly debated when it comes to screening for Alzheimer's. "I don't think we should be screening for the presence of beta-amyloid in the general population until we have something effective to offer people," says Sperling.

In the case of individuals with a family history of Alzheimer's, the testing may be warranted, Miller says. But he adds it still leads to an uneasy choice. "There are those individuals who might argue that it's a person's right to know if they're going to get the disease," he says.

And then there are doctors who argue that giving people this information does not improve the quality of life but in fact worsens it, because there are no effective treatments to stop the disease, he adds.

In the meantime, multiple studies and trials involving both tau and beta-amyloid are now under way to figure out how to prevent Alzheimer's. On the tau front, pharmaceutical company AbbVie and C2N Diagnostics are in Phase 1 of a clinical trial to test a tau antibody in patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a neurological disease closely related to Alzheimer's. Early next year, the company will start Phase 1 testing of the antibody with Alzheimer's patients. The goal, says Sullivan, is to slow down the progression of the disease by blocking the spread and accumulation of tau in the brain.

"Someone in the U.S. develops Alzheimer's every 67 seconds."

At Harvard, Sperling is the project leader for a clinical study that is exploring if lowering beta-amyloid buildup in otherwise healthy patients with no memory loss can prevent Alzheimer's from developing down the road. The so-called A4 study (Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's Disease) is a public/private partnership between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and will include approximately 1,000 people ages 65 to 85 over the next three and a half years.

Half the group will receive the drug being tested, and half will get a placebo. Every six months, patients will undergo cognitive testing to see if there is any difference in their memory and recall. At three points during the study, they will have a brain PET scan to see if their amyloid buildup has changed.

"This is analogous to what we do with cholesterol, by trying to do things that keep it in check so that we can prevent heart attacks and strokes before they happen," Sperling says.

Whether it's through the tau protein or beta-amyloid, preventing Alzheimer's is the major focus of researchers today. "I think our best bet with Alzheimer's is to act before there are symptoms," she says. "Because by the time that happens, there's more than just a head full of amyloid. There's already loss of key neurons and brain shrinkage that we're not going to be able to bring back."
— By Susan Caminiti, special to CNBC.com

Good news! (U.S. hiring on fire in October, jobless rate falls to 5 percent.)

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/11/06/jobs-report

Interesting info about the relationship between hearing aids and mental decline of elderly!

Hearing aids may slow mental decline in hard-of-hearing elderly 

By Janice Neumann November 5, 2015 10:42 AM                              

.

View photo

An employee of GN, the world's fourth largest maker of hearing aids, demonstrates the use of ReSound …

By Janice Neumann

(Reuters Health) - Seniors with hearing loss who use hearing aids may experience cognitive decline at a rate more like their peers without hearing trouble, according to a French study that followed thousands of seniors for 25 years.

Past research has shown a link between hearing loss and steeper cognitive decline in old age, but few have tracked that relationship over a quarter century.

“With a large sample size and 25 years of follow-up of participants, this study clearly confirms that hearing loss is associated with cognitive decline in older adults,” said the study’s lead author, Helene Amieva. “Using hearing aids attenuates cognitive decline in elders presenting with hearing loss.”
Amieva, a researcher at the University of Bordeaux in France, pointed out that about 30 percent of people age 65 and older have some degree of hearing loss and that’s true of 70 percent to 90 percent of those aged 85 and older.

“It is well known that individuals with hearing loss often experience depressive symptoms and social isolation,” Amieva said in an email.

To see if hearing loss contributes to cognitive decline with age, and if hearing aids might offset that effect, the researchers used data from a large, long-term study of people in France who were 65 and older and living at home, rather than in institutional settings, when they were first recruited in 1989-1990.

Amieva’s team focused on more than 3,700 people who answered questionnaires 12 times over 25 years and underwent psychological exams to assess their cognitive skills and mood. Of this group, 137 people reported at the outset that they had major hearing loss, another 1,139 had moderate hearing problems such as trouble following conversations with several people talking or in a noisy background and 2,394 had no hearing troubles.

Those with hearing loss were more likely to be men and less educated, to have depressive symptoms and more chronic diseases, and to be more dependent on others, the authors report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Cognitive decline was measured with a 30-point questionnaire often used to screen for dementia, which includes questions such as what year it is and asks individuals to repeat simple phrases. The participants’ ability to perform activities of daily living well, and their degree of depressive symptoms were also assessed.

After accounting for age, gender and education, the researchers found there was a significant association between hearing loss and a lower score on the mental health screening, as well as greater cognitive decline over the 25-year period.

Overall, people with hearing loss scored lower for cognitive skills at the beginning of the study compared to the people without hearing loss.

But among those with hearing loss, people who used hearing aids experienced a rate of decline in cognitive skills that was more like those without any hearing loss. For participants with hearing problems who did not use hearing aids, the decline was steeper, translating to an extra 1.5 points of decline on a 30-point scale over 25 years.

“It is a significant decline, both from a clinical and statistical point of view,” Amieva said.
After adjusting for depressive symptoms, social networks, chronic diseases, dependency, psychotropic drug use and dementia, however, the differences in cognitive decline diminished, the authors note.

“One thought is when individuals do have hearing loss, what happens is they miss bits and pieces of information and so it isolates them,” said Thomas Zalewski of Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. “So when people are isolated, they aren’t communicating as much and what happens is this vicious cycle.”

“They’re not engaged and we all know when we’re not engaged, we have this increase in cognitive decline,” he said.

The study team concludes that auditory rehabilitation programs should be considered for older people who can’t hear well. Such programs include listening and communication skills, as well as instruction in the use of hearing aids.

“These results underline the importance of addressing the problem of under-diagnosis and under-treatment of hearing loss in elderly adults,” Amieva told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1RCnDHP Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, online October 20, 2015.

http://news.yahoo.com/hearing-aids-may-slow-mental-decline-hard-hearing-154245358.html

What a fun video!

 

Longtime Friends

Check out this great video! We all need friends like this.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipnGPeRIy2k

M.S In Construction

Construction is the field with scope right now, every city and country is developing and for this purpose it needs construction to build new buildings and departments. Construction is quite wide field and it needs designers as well as builders. This field is bringing advancement in the field, new technologies and designs for the development of new building and to make the construction setup strong. For this industry there must be knowledge of finance, entrepreneur skills and technical things. Business plan and leadership qualities are the most required abilities in order to do construction. Now students are coming towards this field and studying about advance developments in construction industry. 

Students are studying abroad for the M.S in the construction industry to bring new developments and ideas in this field, and to open new opportunities for the next generation. The course in M.S construction will teach you about the handling of multiple task, how to schedule the finance and to make new strategies. In this study they can learn about the safety and prevention control, new technologies, project planning and how to make good relationships with labor to encourage them for their work.The M.S in construction industry will basically teach students about the management.To maintain the high standards of the education regarding construction industry there must be high faculty staff to help student to manage the skills they need to manage their job. Students will get new ideas during this education and will know about the different aspect of the field. By sharing different ideas and by making friendly relationship with the labor they will bring new developments to the field. By building correct strategies in this field new ideas and development will be in the construction field and as new comers will come in this field, this industry will be more strong.

Jason Geschwind 

Finance For The Construction Development

Finance is the life of the construction and development industry, to give hand to industry and to help them in finance for building the new building and to make the industry strong. Every industry need financing to establish themselves and to produce new projects for development. Many companies are working to give finance in order to build new projects and to make their profit as well. This work needs powerful resources and reliable firms to work with. Some of the laws have been generated to have finance. People now have enough awareness that how to manage the finance and how to resolve the issue at the time of taking finance from some firm.

Banks do work for the major projects no matter how much they need to buy, they give loan by guessing the approximate value of the project and after completing all the paper work they give loan to the company for development. For commercial property types there are number of types of loans and it depends upon the project and time period they need to return the finance back

1. Construction and Re habilitation loan: In this kind of loan company can have loan for the commercial properties and all the major and small companies may have loan for the development of new projects. This kind of finance is usually short term and within the specific time company need to return back finance to the bank.

2. Structural: This type of loan covers the broad properties and gives finance solution on the balance sheet to let the client understand about the terms.

3. Special Finance: This finance is for the new constructions and for the development of the home and healthcare projects. These are for the residential and apartment finance. These kind of loans are special and for multi-purpose.

Jason Geschwind

Right Assisted living Services | Jason Geschwind

A residential option for elders and senior while making themselves entertain in their daily routine, like cooking meals, making appointments to different locations, going to bathroom at different intervals as in the middle of nights, keeping house. An assisted living strategy, is a great choice when you live lonely, when you need more personal care like in retirement age and better treatment than you were at home. Simply it is stated as nursing treatment at your living place. Assisted living facility offers you a safety and security for 24-hours and provide you all kinds of support. Whether it will be day or night, help is just one call away, however, independence will be encouraged. A Good facility will make perfect relationship and accommodates your all weaknesses and disabilities.


How to decide, an assisted facility will be right decision for us?

Some of the questions that will spark in your mind when you are switching your decision to assisted living facility.:

Will this system give you more help that you were getting from your family and friends?
This question will come first because due to that activities of daily life will get stressful and overwhelmed. If family and your friends are not bridging the gap of your requirement, then it will definitely a good idea to switch.

Will you feel lonely, as you were feeling at your place earlier?
Having fresh and active social life always be very beneficial for happy life and great health. When you get alone for much of the time , this will lead to producing a depression in your life. Social aspects of assisted living have a great benefit on daily life, the best part is that community environment will produce new and better friends.

Will that place be safe for you?
Your mobility will be difficult wherever you are switching, so it must be very safe in these industries to switch.

Will transportation make an issue while switches places?
Perhaps, it will be very difficult to travel or doing daily routine works that needs transportation, Assisted Living Industries also offers you transportation facility.

 Jason Geschwind

When is it time that you are receiving too much healthcare?

Have you ever heard people debating about how much health care a patient should be allowed to receive?  This has been an ongoing debate for some time now.  There are some patients who people would claim that there may be an excessive amount of time spent on their medical treatment.

Granted some people are very seriously ill and may require more medical care than others.  However there comes a point in time where some of the medical care becomes questionable.

There will always be those patients who receive an endless amount of medical tests.  Now, the real question to ask is whether or not those medical tests are absolutely necessary. 

If tests are repeatedly being done on a patient without a definite answer from the tests.  Medically, it would make sense that you should keep doing tests to help determine what illness is causing problems for the patient.

Procedures are another main concern when it comes to patients being over serviced.  Surgery after surgery, or any small procedure can become very costly for both the medical facility and the patient. 

If a procedure is not absolutely necessary there should be a limit on whether or not to conduct another procedure on that patient.  The problem that arises when some patients are being over served is that that are other sick patients who are not getting the necessary time spent on their illness because all the medical staff is waiting on other patients who may be receiving care more often.

This is a problem because other patients need procedures and or appointments to consult their illnesses with a doctor.  However, doctors are becoming unavailable to them because they are so busy with the over treatment of the other patients. 

Some of the patients who have yet had a formal diagnosis from a doctor may be at a higher risk than the patients who are known to be very ill.  The patients who are lacking the necessary care may have symptoms of cancer or a disease but cannot get to a doctor fast enough to get it checked out. 

Doctors who are waiting longer than they should be on other ill patients could be causing more damage than they think.  If there are patients who are not living independently and have chosen to live at assisted livings, they may have a better advantage than those living at home independently. 

The reason is because these patients have other medical staffing that could at least provide a general idea of what may be going on with their bodies.  They will then need to schedule an appointment with a doctor to confirm a diagnosis.

Jason Geschwind

Animal Assisted Therapy

There is one particular type of therapy that majority of the population forgets about.  This  type of therapy is pet therapy.  Pets have the ability to make the human race feel a sense of happiness  that they may not be able to find anywhere else.

If you grew up with pets of your own you may know exactly what we are talking about.  Associating humans with pets can increase the chemical chain of reactions to their brains. 

Assisted living often allow pets to be brought into their facility for occasional pet therapy.  The residents and staff may appear to love this, however it is doing much deeper therapy for each individual. 

According to research, if humans have approximately fifteen minutes of association with a pet then the signals that are sent to their brains with ignite the feel-good hormone.  This hormone is commonly referred to as serotonin.

When the production of this hormone is increases then the body’s internal functions are altered.  This means that the individuals who are interacting with the pet will experience lower heart rates, a stress relief and their blood pressure levels will decrease. 

There are also long term effects that can have a major impact on the health of the individuals.  The humans will show a lasting effect of a lower cholesterol level as well as making their overall mood happy.

 In return, if you are in a positively happy mood then this lowers your chances of becoming depressed or suffering from anxiety.  When a body is experiencing depression, anxiety, or stress your body can become more prone to heart complications or strokes. 

If humans suffering from any of these disorders receives regular pet therapy their chances will likely decrease over time.  In the long run it could prevent them from any further disorders happening in the future. 

Assisted living facilities will allow pet therapy for these various reasons.  Just like any other public facility, the pets that are brought in for the therapy sessions are required to be up to date on shots and well behaved animals.

Jason Geschwind