Melbourne, Sept 28 (ANI): In response to having one of the world's most rapidly ageing populations, Japan has staged a fashion show for adult nappies.

The Tokyo fashion show introduced a collection of 170 adult nappies and smaller pads, with male and female models walking and striking a pose to the tunes of 1980s British and American pop and rock music.

Wearing white nappies over their black stockings, the models displayed the designer's intention of keeping the elderly clean and dry. The moderator introduced the first design, "Relief" - a "thin, lively type of underpant that can be pulled up easily".

"Shaped to fit elderly people's bodies and made of soft material that feels like putting on real underwear. Also uses anti-germ, deodorant sheets,'' News.com.au quoted her, as saying.

"Number two - a 'Profit' slim-crotch with gathers that fit the buttocks to prevent leakage,'' she added.

The audience of several hundred people flipped through the Diaper Catalogue 2008 that lists all products in the show for more detailed information.

The event, a new concept, was organised by Mutsukian, a private-sector group that offers information on tending to elderly people's personal needs, with the support of 70 volunteers as well as nappy-makers.

Kiyoko Hamada, 58, who heads Mutsukian, said she "wanted people to take a look at diapers in a cheerful manner".

"They are necessary products and you don't need to feel ashamed,'' she said. (ANI)

Kangan/Srinagar, Oct 3 (ANI): In one of the longest gunfights in recent times, Indian army gunned down all thirteen militants in a fierce five-day encounter in Kangan area of Jammu and Kashmir.

Acting on a tip-off, the army decided to take on the militants who were hiding in the hilly terrain of Chhamarsar area, between Bandipore and Kangan regions of the valley.

The encounter, which began late night on September 27 and ended on October 01, took place at an altitude of 15, 000 feet. The militants were holed up inside a cave in the mountains.

"From September 27, it ended on October 1. During this period we landed few more additional troops who linked up with the troops in the area, and the end result was that we were able to neutralise all 13 militants in the area. We have as on today, recovered 11 bodies, and part two of the operation, to recover two more bodies, which have been buried in the debris of the cave which have collapsed is on and I am sure, we will be able to recover these bodies," said VSS Gaudar, General Officer Commanding (GOC) of the Kilo Force.

Eleven AK-47/56 rifles, 27 magazines, 287 rounds of ammunition and two satellite phones have been recovered from the slain terrorists.

Though the identity of the militants is uncertain, the army denied the possibility of them belonging to any new group.

"We are not sure about the identity of these militants but according to us, they are not from any new group. All these people belong to some old group, which had gathered together and was going towards some other place, maybe to Kangan or towards south Kashmir. This operation took place between Bandipore and Kangan," Gaudar added.

One soldier was also killed during the encounter. (ANI)

Washington, Sept 9 (ANI): Premature babies are four times more likely to have emotional problems or behavioural disorders later in life than their peers, according to a new study.

The research led by the University of Warwick examined the behaviour of 200 six-year-old children who had been born below 26 weeks gestation, known as 'extremely pre-term'.

The team compared the behaviour of these extremely pre-term children with a control group of a similar age. They used reports filed by parents and teachers to test whether extremely pre-term children had more pervasive behaviour problems (described by both teachers and parents).

The researchers found 30.6 percent of pre-term children were hyperactive, compared to 8.8 percent in the full-term group, and 33.3 percent of pre-term children displayed attention problems, compared to 6.8 percent.

They highlighted a distinction between genders in the pre-term group.

Boys born prematurely showed a higher degree of behaviour problems, such as ADHD, and girls experienced more internalising disorders such as anxiety and depression.

The study also showed that extremely pre-term boys were more vulnerable to behavioural problems, and they had a greater impact on parents and teachers than extremely pre-term girls.

Professor of Developmental Psychology at Warwick Medical School, Dr Dieter Wolke said: "In this cohort of pre-term children we found a considerable excess of behaviour difficulties, including problems in a range of domains such as emotion, hyperactivity, attention and peer relationship problems.

"Parents and teachers agreed these behaviour problems had a considerable impact on home and school life for 23 percent of the pre-term group."(ANI)

London, September 23 (ANI): A new study by French and US researchers has suggested that zero-gravity can adversely affect astronauts' ability to judge size and distance, which may make them bad drivers.

According to a report in New Scientist, the new finding may have implications for the way astronauts pilot spacecraft and perform tasks while on spacewalks.

NASA has long suspected something goes wrong with our visual perception when in space. Some of the Apollo astronauts reported difficulties judging distance while on the moon, for example: far-off rocks and features seemed closer than they really were.

It is also well known that space-shuttle pilots perform better with flight simulators and training aircraft than they do landing the shuttle after real missions.

Some researchers have suggested that these effects could be the result of confinement or the absence of easy landmarks, such as trees or buildings, but the new study pins the blame on the lack of gravity.

Humans orientate in 3D by using otoliths, small crystals of calcium carbonate and protein that shift on hairs in the inner ear. Forces acting on these grains as a person moves mean they can sense acceleration and gravitational pull.

The researchers suggested that living in zero gravity would interfere with this process.

"When you arrive in microgravity, you don't have this system any more telling you whether you're tilted," said Gilles Clement, the lead author on the paper.

This impacts an astronaut's sense of perspective, causing them to misjudge common markers that are used to perceive size and distance, like an object's vanishing point. This would render them unable to accurately assess an object's dimensions.

To test this idea, the team sent subjects aboard European Space Agency flights of a 'vomit comet' - an Airbus plane that repeatedly adopts a parabolic trajectory to create brief 20-second bouts of microgravity.

Donning virtual-reality goggles, subjects were randomly positioned in mid-air.

Using a hand-held trackball connected to a nearby computer, they were asked to adjust the line drawing of a cube that was distorted in one dimension.

In normal gravity, test subjects could adjust the depth or height cube so all sides appeared to be the same length. But without gravity, however briefly, they did not perform as well.

Instead, the adjusted cubes were still distorted - sometimes by as much as 4.5 percent. Overall, objects viewed in free fall appeared taller, thinner and shallower than they did under normal gravity.

This distortion of vision could also make it difficult to judge the velocity of objects, which humans achieve in part by tracking how fast an object changes in size as it moves.

The fact that the microgravity tests only ran for 20 seconds at a time suggests that astronauts' problem with perception is a physiological issue, and not a result of adaptation to enclosed environments. (ANI)