More trips around the sun does not mean inevitable decline, new research suggests – and having a optimistic outlook can even bring improvements By most standards, Prof Velandai Srikanth is at the peak of his career. He is the director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing; his decades of highly regarded research has led to work being published in leading scientific journals; and he has been awarded funding from some of the world’s biggest scientific funding bodies. He has also turned 60, and