Melbourne, Apr 27 : Votes in the Swiss Alps have passed legislation banning naked hiking after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their region.

The government recommended the ban after citizens objected to seeing the nude walkers, wearing nothing more than boots.

"The reactions of the population have shown that such appearances over a large area are perceived as thoroughly disturbing and irritating," News. com. au quoted the government as saying.

London, April 27 : Young actors of the Harry Potter series will have their age digitally advanced for the final film using the same technology as in `The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button'.

Producer David Heyman and director David Yates revealed they had previously considered swapping Daniel Radcliffe, 19, Emma Watson, 19, and Rupert Grint, 20, for older actors.

Washington, April 27 : Scientists in The Netherlands are reporting development of a new plastic with a "self-healing polymer" that has potential for use in the first easy-to-recycle computer circuit boards, electrical insulation, and other electronics products that now wind up on society's growing heaps of electronic waste.

Antonius Broekhuis and colleagues note in the new study that so-called thermoset plastics are widely used in consumer electronics due to their hardness and heat resistance.

Nanjing (China), Apr. 27 : The Chinese mainland and Taiwan decided on Sunday to double flights between them and change chartered flights to regular ones for the first time, as their ties are now in "a new era of peaceful development".

Total flights between the mainland and Taiwan will grow from 108 chartered per week to 270, including regular ones, according to an agreement signed between Chen Yunlin, the president of the mainland''s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS), and Chiang Pin-kung, chairman of Taiwan''s Straits Exchange Foundation (SEF).

London, Apr 27 : In a first of its kind study, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way to induce gamma waves by shining laser light directly onto the brains of mice, which could lead to new treatments of brain-related disorders.

For a long time, scientists have studied high-frequency brain waves, known as gamma oscillations, believing them to be crucial to consciousness, attention, learning and memory.