Monthly Archives: November 2019

A thousand seemingly insignificant things change as an organism ages. Beyond the obvious signs like graying hair and memory problems are myriad shifts both subtler andmore consequential: Metabolic processes run less smoothly; neurons respond less swiftly; the replication of DNA grows faultier.

But while bodies mayseem to just gradually wear out, many researchers believe instead that aging is controlled at the cellular and biochemical level. They find evidence for this in the throngof biological mechanisms that are linked to aging but also conserved across species as distantly related as roundworms and humans. Whole subfields of research have grown up around biologists attempts to understand the relationships among the core genes involved in aging, which seem to connect highly disparate biological functions, like metabolism and perception. If scientists can pinpoint which of the changes in these processes induce aging, rather than result from it, it may be possible to intervene and extend the human life span.

So far, research has suggested that severely limiting calorie intake can have a beneficial effect, as can manipulating certain genes in laboratory animals. But recently in Nature, Bruce Yankner, a professor of genetics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues reported on a previously overlooked controller of life span: the activity level of neurons in the brain. In a series of experiments on roundworms, mice and human brain tissue, they found that a protein called REST, which controls the expression of many genes related to neural firing, also controls life span. They also showed that boosting the levels of the equivalent of REST in worms lengthens their lives by making their neurons fire more quietly and with more control. How exactly overexcitation of neurons might shorten life span remains to be seen, but the effect is real and its discovery suggests new avenues for understanding the aging process.

In the early days of the molecular study of aging, many people were skeptical that it was even worth looking into. Cynthia Kenyon, a pioneering researcher in this area at the University of California, San Francisco, has described attitudes in the late 1980s: The ageing field at the time was considered a backwater by many molecular biologists, and the students were not interested, or were even repelled by the idea. Many of my faculty colleagues felt the same way. One told me that I would fall off the edge of the Earth if I studied ageing.

That was because many scientists thought that aging (more specifically, growing old) must be a fairly boring, passive process at the molecular level nothing more than the natural result of things wearing out. Evolutionary biologists argued that aging could not be regulated by any complex or evolved mechanism because it occurs after the age of reproduction, when natural selection no longer has a chance to act. However, Kenyon and a handful of colleagues thought that if the processes involved in aging were connected to processes that acted earlier in an organisms lifetime, the real story might be more interesting than people realized. Through careful, often poorly funded work on Caenorhabditis elegans, the laboratory roundworm, they laid the groundwork for what is now a bustling field.

A key early finding was that the inactivation of a gene called daf-2 was fundamental to extending the life span of the worms. daf-2 mutants were the most amazing things I had ever seen. They were active and healthy and they lived more than twice as long as normal, Kenyon wrote in a reflection on these experiments. It seemed magical but also a little creepy: they should have been dead, but there they were, moving around.

This gene and a second one called daf-16 are both involved in producing these effects in worms. And as scientists came to understand the genes activities, it became increasingly clear that aging is not separate from the processes that control an organisms development before the age of sexual maturity; it makes use of the same biochemical machinery. These genes are important in early life, helping the worms to resist stressful conditions during their youth. As the worms age, modulation of daf-2 and daf-16 then influences their health and longevity.

These startling results helped draw attention to the field, and over the next two decades many other discoveries illuminated a mysterious network of signal transduction pathways where one protein binds another protein, which activates another, which switches off another and so on that, if disturbed, can fundamentally alter life span. By 1997, researchers had discovered that in worms daf-2 is part of a family of receptors that send signals triggered by insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar, and the structurally similar hormone IGF-1, insulin-like growth factor 1; daf-16 was farther down that same chain. Tracing the equivalent pathway in mammals, scientists found that it led to a protein called FoxO, which binds to the DNA in the nucleus, turning a shadowy army of genes on and off.

That it all comes down to the regulation of genes is perhaps not surprising, but it suggests that the processes that control aging and life span are vastly complex, acting on many systems at once in ways that may be hard to pick apart. But sometimes, its possible to shine a little light on whats happening, as in the Yankner groups new paper.

Figuring out which genes are turned on and off in aging brains has long been one of Yankners interests. About 15 years ago, in a paper published in Nature, he and his colleagues looked at gene expression data from donated human brains to see how it changes over a lifetime. Some years later, they realized that many of the changes theyd seen were caused by a protein called REST. REST, which turns genes off, was mainly known for its role in the development of the fetal brain: It represses neuronal genes until the young brain is ready for them to be expressed.

But thats not the only time its active. We discovered in 2014 that [the REST gene] is actually reactivated in the aging brain, Yankner said.

To understand how the REST protein does its job, imagine that the network of neurons in the brain is engaged in something like the party game Telephone. Each neuron is covered with proteins and molecular channels that enable it to fire and pass messages. When one neuron fires, it releases a flood of neurotransmitters that excite or inhibit the firing of the next neuron down the line. REST inhibits the production of some of the proteins and channels involved in this process, reining in the excitation.

In their new study, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, Yankners team turned to C. elegans. They compared neural activity in the splendidly long-lived daf-2 mutants with that of normal worms and saw that firing levels in the daf-2 animals were indeed very different.

They were almost silent. They had very low neural activity compared to normal worms, Yankner said, noting that neural activity usually increases with age in worms. This was very interesting, and sort of parallels the gene expression pattern we saw in the extremely old humans.

When the researchers gave normal roundworms drugs that suppressed excitation, it extended their life spans. Genetic manipulation that suppressed inhibition the process that keeps neurons from firing did the reverse. Several other experiments using different methods confirmed their results. The firing itself was somehow controlling life span and in this case, less firing meant more longevity.

Because REST was plentiful in the brains of long-lived people, the researchers wondered if lab animals without REST would have more neural firing and shorter lives. Sure enough, they found that the brains of elderly mice in which the Rest gene had been knocked out were a mess of overexcited neurons, with a tendency toward bursts of activity resembling seizures. Worms with boosted levels of their version of REST (proteins named SPR-3 and SPR-4) had more controlled neural activity and lived longer. But daf-2 mutant worms deprived of REST were stripped of their longevity.

It suggests that there is a conserved mechanism from worms to [humans], Yankner said. You have this master transcription factor that keeps the brain at what we call a homeostatic or equilibrium level it doesnt let it get too excitable and that prolongs life span. When that gets out of whack, its deleterious physiologically.

Whats more, Yankner and his colleagues found that in worms the life extension effect depended on a very familiar bit of DNA: daf-16. This meant that RESTs trail had led the researchers back to that highly important aging pathway, as well as the insulin/IGF-1 system. That really puts the REST transcription factor somehow squarely into this insulin signaling cascade, said Thomas Flatt, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Fribourg who studies aging and the immune system. REST appears to be yet another way of feeding the basic molecular activities of the body into the metabolic pathway.

Neural activity has been implicated in life span before, notes Joy Alcedo, a molecular geneticist at Wayne State University who studies the connections between sensory neurons, aging and developmental processes. Previous studies have found that manipulating the activity of even single neurons in C. elegans can extend or shorten life span. Its not yet clear why, but one possibility is that the way the worms respond biochemically to their environment may somehow trip a switch in their hormonal signaling that affects how long they live.

The new study, however, suggests something broader: that overactivity in general is unhealthy. Neuronal overactivity may not feel like anything in particular from the viewpoint of the worm, mouse or human, unless it gets bad enough to provoke seizures. But perhaps over time it may damage neurons.

The new work also ties into the idea that aging may fundamentally involve a loss of biological stability, Flatt said. A lot of things in aging and life span somehow have to do with homeostasis. Things are being maintained in a proper balance, if you will. Theres a growing consensus in aging research that what we perceive as the body slowing down may in fact be a failure to preserve various equilibria. Flatt has found that aging flies show higher levels of immune-related molecules, and that this rise contributes to their deaths. Keeping the levels in check, closer to what they might have been when the flies were younger, extends their lives.

The results may help explain the observation that some drugs used for epilepsy extend life span in lab animals, said Nektarios Tavernarakis, a molecular biologist at the University of Crete who wrote a commentary that accompanied Yankners recent paper. If overexcitation shortens life span, then medicines that systematically reduce excitation could have the opposite effect. This new study provides a mechanism, he said.

In 2014, Yankners laboratory also reported that patients with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers have lower levels of REST. The early stages of Alzheimers, Yankner notes, involve an increase in neural firing in the hippocampus, a part of the brain that deals with memory. He and his colleagues wonder whether the lack of REST contributes to the development of these diseases; they are now searching for potential drugs that boost REST levels to test in lab organisms and eventually patients.

In the meantime, however, its not clear that people can do anything to put the new findings about REST to work in extending their longevity. According to Yankner, REST levels in the brain havent been tied to any particular moods or states of intellectual activity. It would be a misconception, he explained by email, to correlate amount of thinking with life span. And while he notes that there is evidence that meditation and yoga can have a variety of beneficial effects for mental and physical health, no studies show that they have any bearing on REST levels.

Why exactly do overexcited neurons lead to death? Thats still a mystery. The answer probably lies somewhere downstream of the DAF-16 protein and FoxO, in the genes they turn on and off. They may be increasing the organisms ability to deal with stress, reworking its energy production to be more efficient, shifting its metabolism into another gear, or performing any number of other changes that together add up a sturdier and longer-lived organism. It is intriguing that something as transient as the activity state of a neural circuit could have such a major physiological influence on something as protean as life span, Yankner said.

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Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons - Quanta Magazine

Life insurance companies have been given a two-month extension to withdraw products and riders that are not in tandem with the new product regulations. This is a good news for policyholders as they would have no sudden dearth of products to choose from, while for insurers this means that they have more time to get products out of the market.

The Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) had earlier asked insurers to withdraw products by November 30. But this deadline has now been extended to January 31, 2020.

IRDAI said that they had received representations from Life Insurance Council and various other life insurers, requesting for an extension of the timeline. Insurers had sought an extension citing reasons like the need to ensure system preparedness and necessary training of personnel.

However, the deadline to refile or modify existing products, which was fixed at February 29, 2020, will continue. This applies to products under the linked and non-liked insurance segment.

IRDAI said that the new guidelines with respect to benefit illustrations, periodic statements, agent training for unit-linked insurance plans will be applicable from February 1, 2020 as against the earlier December 1, 2019 deadline.

The regulator had said that the extension does not apply for products already approved under 'File & Use' under the new regulations. IRDAI has advised all life insurers to file these products as early as possible without waiting for the last date available. It also said that the no further requests for extension will be entertained.

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Life insurers get extension till January 2020 to withdraw old products - Moneycontrol.com

JERSEY CITY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--New Jersey is home to some of the worlds most accomplished innovators in applied science. Three of them who are pioneering research and solutions in antibacterial therapies, genetics, human life extension, and food production are being honored by Liberty Science Center at its inaugural The Genius of NJ celebration on Monday, December 2.

The celebration starts at 5:30 pm with cocktails and unique technology demonstrations: a full-body 3D scanner from Lenscloud that can scan a person in half a second with 120 cameras and create a realistic 3D avatar; bomb-disposing robots and an autonomous fighting robot from Picatinny Arsenal; and Flyer, a personal aerial vehicle from Kitty Hawk, headquartered in Mountain View, CA.

The New Jersey honorees are Bonnie Bassler, Chair of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, who is developing novel antimicrobial therapies to render pathogenic bacteria harmless; Dr. Robert J. Hariri, Chairman, Founder & CEO of Celularity, Inc. who is pioneering the use of stem cells to cure disease and slow aging; and David Rosenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of AeroFarms, the worlds leader in mass-scale vertical indoor farming.

Our inaugural Genius of NJ Award Winners represent the best this state and the world have to offer in harnessing science for the betterment of humanity, said Liberty Science Center President and CEO Paul Hoffman. Each is using his or her exceptional intellect and creative abilities to disrupt and innovate both in their respective fields and in their commitment to making the world healthier and safer.

Bonnie Bassler is the Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology and Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Professor Bassler deciphered the chemical language bacteria cells use to communicate by studying a harmless marine bacterium called Vibrio fischeri, known to bioluminesce, or make light, like fireflies do. She is a winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant and is now developing therapies that disrupt communication among harmful bacteria and strengthen communication among helpful bacteria. At a time when an increasing number of bacteria are resistant to traditional kinds of antibiotics, Dr. Bassler offers a promising new approach to antimicrobial therapy.

The Chairman, Founder and CEO of Celularity, Inc., in Warren, NJ, and Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Human Longevity, Inc., Dr. Robert Hariri is the quintessential renaissance man. Hes a neurosurgeon, a medical researcher, and a serial entrepreneur in two technology sectors: aerospace and biomedicine. Dr. Hariri has advised the Vatican on genetics, and in 2018, Pope Francis bestowed on him the Pontifical Key Award for Innovation. Dr. Hariris path to discovering that the placenta, a temporary organ discarded after birth, was a potent source of stem cells began in the 80s when he viewed a first trimester ultrasound of his oldest daughter and wondered why the placenta was so large. Today Dr. Hariri is working to use placental stem cells to cure disease, slow aging, and augment healthy human lifespan.

Prominent entrepreneur David Rosenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of AeroFarms, set out to reinvent one of the most basic aspects of food production, farming. AeroFarms has grown 800 species of plants indoors and can grow them 365 days a year without sun or soil, achieving yields 130 times greater than conventional farming. His system uses 95 percent less water than field farming and no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. Rosenbergs adoption of cutting-edge technology has been a cornerstone of AeroFarms, which set up its first indoor vertical farms in abandoned warehouses in Newark. He employs plant biologists, microbiologists, geneticists, systems engineers, and data scientists. AeroFarms innovations in indoor vertical farming have improved not just plant yields but also taste, texture, nutritional density, and shelf life.

Additionally, LSC will honor non-New Jersian Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk, a company spun off from a Google moonshot effort to free the world from traffic. Kitty Hawk is developing all-electric, vertical take-off flying machines for everyday use. Known as the godfather of self-driving cars, as a Stanford professor in 2005, Thrun led a team that won the $2-million Defense Department Grand Challenge to build an autonomous vehicle which drove itself unassisted on a 132-mile course across the Mojave Desert. His winning entry, Stanley, is now on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. While at Stanford, in 2011 he and colleague Peter Norvig offered their Introduction to Artificial Intelligence course online to anyone, for free. Over 160,000 students in more than 190 countries enrolled! The MOOC (which stands for Massive Open Online Course) was born, and Thrun founded the online education company Udacity, with the goal of democratizing education. Thrun relinquished his tenured Stanford professorship to join Google and founded the companys semi-secret R&D division called Google X (now called simply X) to develop breakthrough technologies, such as self-driving cars, that make the world a radically better place.

Ticket prices for The Genius of NJ start at $750 per guest with options for table sponsorship from $12,500 to $50,000. For more details, please visit The Genius of NJ online. All proceeds from this event will support LSCs mission to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers.

About Liberty Science Center

Liberty Science Center (LSC.org) is a 300,000-square-foot nonprofit learning center located in Liberty State Park on the Jersey City bank of the Hudson near the Statue of Liberty. Dedicated to inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers and bringing the power, promise, and pure fun of science and technology to learners of all ages, Liberty Science Center houses the largest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere, 12 museum exhibition halls, a live animal collection with 110 species, giant aquariums, a 3D theater, live simulcast surgeries, a tornado-force wind simulator, K-12 classrooms and labs, and teacher-development programs. More than 250,000 students visit the Science Center each year, and tens of thousands more participate in the Centers off-site and online programs. Welcoming more than 750,000 visitors annually, LSC is the largest interactive science center in the NYC-NJ metropolitan area.

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Liberty Science Center's Inaugural Genius of New Jersey to Honor Innovators Who Make the State a World Leader in Cutting-Edge Applied Science -...

Increasingly, the unprecedented levels of food waste in the developed world, at a time when close to one billion of the worlds population faces starvation, is seen as an international scandal.

At the same time, people are becoming more aware of the enduring damage inflicted upon the planet by the disposal of 20th century packaging materials.

Tackling these problems at source will require massive changes, all under circular economy principles.

However, such actions are hugely disruptive to well-established industries and often come at significant extra cost - ultimately to the consumer.

One measure which can be taken quickly - and often at comparatively low cost - is to extend the shelf life of food and drink.

When it comes to shelf life extension, one area currently under investigation is the use of packaging materials which have been enhanced to reduce microbiological growth. Also known as active packaging, the packaging material is treated directly, and/or the food products are coated with antimicrobial agents.

These antimicrobial agents can be essential oils such as oregano, clove or orange, or organic acids such as acetic acid or natural polymers, for example chitosan, which are derived from shellfish and insects.

Initial research conducted on active packaging and its ability to control microbiological growth has been promising, with a variety of materials assessed. However, further analytical work is required to understand the full scope of antimicrobial efficacy against a variety of microorganisms, as well as how temperature abuse might affect the proposed packaging and coatings. Additionally, the packaging materials themselves must be thoroughly assessed to understand potential chemical and physical hazards.

As it shifts from traditional plastic packaging to novel active packaging and coatings, the food industry should therefore work closely with scientific safety analysis (as well as with sensory panel testing) to understand the potential hazards.

Otherwise, the benefits of longer shelf life could come at the cost of serious unintended consequences for human health.

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Antimicrobial packaging can extend shelf life and prevent food waste - but more analysis is needed - The Grocer

Key Point:When every point is weighed, the Su-35 comes out on top.

I have been asked to compare the venerable American F-15 Eagle fighter to Russias new competitor for the crown of best Fourth Generation fighter, theSu-35SFlanker E.

The former is the airplane that in many waysdefinedwhat a Fourth Generation fighter can do. Introduced in the1970s, it has been extensively updated to keep with the timesand hundreds will remain in service for decades to come.

The latter is an upgraded Su-27 Flankerthe Soviet-era counterpart to the F-15now sporting modernized avionics and munitions, fancy vector-thrust engines and a fresh coat of radar-absorbent paint.

Ivewritten in detailabout theSu-35Sbefore, and theNational InterestsDaveMajumdarhas written anexcellent analysisof how the two aircraft would fare in aerial clash. He concluded that regardless of their differences, the two aircraft were more or less closely matched. As a result, supporting assets and pilot skill are more likely to determine the outcomes of an engagement between the two rather than any technological gap.

Here, Id like to break down the strengths and weaknesses of the two aircraft, and how those will inform their ability to perform various mission.

Sensors and Stealth

TheSu-35Shas a powerfulIrbis-Epassive electronically scanned array radar with a range of up to 400 kilometers; it is also effective against ground targets. However, the F-15sAPG-63V3Active Electronically Scanned Array radar is superiorharder to jam, higher resolution and harder to track.

The Su-35 boasts an infrared search and track system (IRST), which allows it to determine the general position of aircraft within a fifty kilometer radiuspotentially quite useful for detecting stealth aircraft at shorter ranges. The F-15 doesnt have an IRST.

However, a new add-on pod that is entering service, Talon HATE, will not only add an IRST to the F-15 but provide data fusion with other air and surface sensors, even allowing it tonetwork with F-22 Raptor stealth fighters, which use a nonstandarddatalink. Using this system, Raptors could fly ahead and identify hostile targets and send the targeting data to missile-firingF-15sa safer distance to the rear.

The F-15 wasnt designed to be stealthyand itisnt, with an average radar cross section of five meters squared. The Su-35 has been designed for stealth, and reportedly can achieve a radar cross section ranging between one to three meters squared. So the Su-35willshow up on radars less quicklybut a radar cross-section of one meter squared can still be detected at fairly long ranges by good modern radars, and will not protect it from being targeted by long-range missiles.

Beyond Visual Range Combat:

The latest air to air missiles can be launched at targets well over 100 kilometers away. While the United States Air Force is convinced that beyond visual range (BVR) combat will dominate air warfare in the twenty-first century, with missiles fired over vast distances, the Russian aviation establishment is more skeptical. It holds that electronic counter measures and evasive maneuvers will lower the hit probability against maneuverable fighter aircraft considerably below the projected fifty to seventy percent hit rate. Russian aircraft are still designed to engage inBVRwarfare, but with the belief that short-range combat is likely to ensue afterBVRvolleys are exchanged.

In terms of weapons load, the Su-35 has twelve or morehardpointsfor carrying missiles compared to just eight on theF-15C. This is a clear advantage for the Su-35, which will likely fire multiple missiles at a time to increase hit probability; however, this edge may prove temporary. Boeing is offering to upgradeF-15swith quad-rail racks that will double the F-15sloadoutto sixteen. This would enable rear-deployedF-15sto serve as missile boats firing at targets painted by a vanguard of F-22 stealth fighters. For the time being, however, the F-15 isout-missiled.

Both the F-15 and Su-35 carry long-range, radar-guided air-to-air missiles: the AIM-120D (160 kilometer range) and the K-77M (200 kilometers range). These missiles are basically in the same classthough the comparative effectiveness of their seekers has yet to be establishedand would likely be firedundertheir maximum range when used against fighter-type aircraft to increase the likelihood of a kill.

The Su-35 can also fire the super-long range (300-400 kilometer)R-37Mmissile, designed to take out ungainly tanker andAWACSsupport aircraft.

Another advantage of the Su-35 is its L175M Khibiny radar jamming system. While American AESA radars are believed to be resistant to jamming, the same is not believed to be true of the radars in AIM-120 missiles; the air-to-air missiles may have a high failure rate against aircraft protected by the Khibiny. In contrast, the Eagles Tactical Electronic Warfare Set countermeasure system dates back to the 1970sanew systemis being proposed as part of the Eagle 2040 upgrade package.

Within Visual Range Combat:

The Eagle is no slouch when it comes to maneuverabilityin fact, it is one of the first designs to prove a heavy fighter could still pull off tight, energy-efficient turns and accelerate while climbing, thanks to low wing loading and high thrust-to-weight ratio.

However, the Su-35 is simply in a class of its own. It uses vector-thrust turbofanswhich means its engine nozzles can move independently to allow it to perform tight turns and yaws and maintain high angles of attack (in which the planes nose is pointed in a different direction than the plane is moving) that ordinary aircraft cant match. The Su-35 will reliably dance around an F-15 in a low-speed dogfight.

In terms of weapons, the F-15 and Su-35 are more evenly matched with their heat-seeking AIM-9X and R-73 missiles: both missile types can be fired off-boresight at targets outside the frontal cone of the aircraft via helmet-mounted sights. Such missiles are believed to have kill probabilities of seventy to eighty percent.

The deadly effectiveness of these short-range air-to-air missilesand the fact that aircraft no longer need to be pointed at their adversaries to launch missiles at themmay actually diminish the benefits of superior maneuverability in future close-range encounters.

Ground Attack:

The Su-35S can carry over 17,000 pounds of munitions on its hardpoints, with up to 14 usable for air-to-ground attacks.

The F-15C can carrynone. Because it is purely an air superiority fighter. (To be fair, refitting for ground combat would not be an insurmountable taskIsrael already refitted its Eagles in the 70s in this manner and used them destroy the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osiriak.)

The F-15E Strike Eagle can carry 23,000 pounds of ordnance. The Strike Eagle can fly just as fast as the F-15C and carry the same air-to-air weapons, but it is somewhat less maneuverable and agile in Within Visual Range combat due to its heavier weight.

In other practical respects, the Russian military makes less use of precision-guided munitions than the United States, and uses a smaller range of types. However, the Su-35 is well equipped to employ them using the ground-attack mode of its Irbis-E radar.

Maintainability:

In general, the United States has tended to make expensive aircraft with long service lives. The Soviet Union and later Russia has tended to makeaffordableaircraft with short service lives and higher maintenance requirements. Some Russian fighters, such as the earlier Su-30 Flanker, have also suffered from significant reliability issues.

The Su-35 appears to narrow the gap in this regard somewhatit is supposed to last six thousand flight hours. The F-15C and E are rated to last eight thousandand sixteen thousandhours, and the former is likely to undergo a life-extension program. On the other hand, the Su-35s rolling off of factory production lines will be at the beginning of their service lives, while most F-15 airframes date back to the 1970s and 1980s.

The Next Generation F-15?:

Boeing has marketed an advanced, stealthy version of the F-15, the Silent Eagle, for yearsand it mayfinallyhave a found a customerin Israel. Recently, Boeing also began promoting an upgrade package for the F-15C, the Eagle 2040C, designed to keep the air-superiority version viable up to 2040.

Would Silent Eagles and Eagle 2040s redress the downsides of contemporary F-15s?

First of all, the Su-35s advantage in maneuverability would remain unchallenged. The Silent Eagle may boast a radar cross sectionas low asone-tenth of one meter squared from the front, ten times smaller than the Su-35. However, the rear and sides would remain unstealthy, though they would still have a decent stealth advantage on a head-on pass.

The Eagle 2040C package would also include IRST and F-22 datalink capacity via the Talon HATE pod, a new electronic countermeasure system, and a potential doubling of missile capacity.

Parting Thoughts:

Ultimately, future air-combat capabilities may be increasingly defined by the effectiveness of missiles and electronic counter measures rather than the aircraft carrying them, particularly in regards to non-stealth airframes.

Nonetheless, the Su-35 takes the crown of best dogfighter, and also remains a very capable and versatile missile platform against both air and ground targets, though it is held back by its lack of state-of-the-art AESA radar.

Current models of the F-15, however, remain capable air superiority fighters with advanced radar, while the F-15E can still carry greater weapons loads for ground attack. Upgraded F-15s would boast extraordinary air-to-air loads, and unparalleled data fusion with supporting ships, satellites and aircraft. The Silent Eagle might also bring an intriguing, though limited, frontal stealth capability to the table. Less than a hundred Su-35Ss are planned to serve in Russia, China, Malaysia and Algeria, though additional orders may ensue. A force of over 200 F-15Es and a smaller number of F-15Cs and Ds is expect for decades into the future of the United States, and well over 400 F-15s of various types currently serve in the Air Forces of Saudi Arabia, Israel, South Korea, Singapore and Japan.

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Death Match: What if America's F-15 Battled Russia's Su-35? - The National Interest Online

The IRFU and Connacht Rugby have confirmed that Bundee Aki has signed a three-year contract extension that will keep him at the Sportsground up to the end of the 2022/23 season.

It's the first full IRFU central contract for a Connacht player.

Aki joined Connacht in 2014 and has played for the province 92 times, scoring 18 tries.

He was selected as the Pro12 Player of the season in 2016 when the side won the championship.

In 2017, he made his international debut for Ireland and has gone on to win 23 caps and score four tries.

The following year he played all five games in Irelands Grand Slam Six Nations success and also started in the win at home to the All Blacks.

During Ireland's disappointing World Cup in Japan Aki played against Scotland, Russia and Samoa in the Pool stages of the competition.

Commenting on the signing, Connacht Head Coach Andy Friend said:

Bundee has been an incredible player for Connacht since his arrival in the Sportsground.

"He has completely embraced every aspect of life in the West of Ireland and has driven standards among the playing group.

"He shares the ambition that we have for the seasons ahead and what he can achieve as a Connacht player.

"His commitment for a further three seasons is a sign of the energy and passion he has for the province.

Bundee Aki also expressed his delight with the signing:

Iam grateful for the opportunity I have been given to represent both Connacht and Ireland and am delighted to extend my IRFU contract.

"The whole of Connacht have been incredibly supportive of both me and my family and the Ireland supporters have been fantastic from the very first day I was selected for the national squad.

"Connacht has become home to me and my family and I want to play my part in helping Connacht achieve their ambitious plans in the years to come.

Meanwhile, Willie Ruane, Connacht Rugby CEO, commented:

Connacht Rugby is delighted that Bundee has extended his contract to 2023.

"This is the third time that Bundee has committed to Connacht Rugby which reflects not only his belief in what we are doing but also our commitment in supporting him to achieve for both Connacht and Ireland.

Everyones in the Team Of Us.

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Connacht's Bundee Aki signs three year contract extension - Off The Ball