With countries around the world taking confusingly different approaches to BPA - some have issued partial bans on it, others maintain it is completely safe - the vexed arguments around BPA may be about to come to a head as European and US food safety regulators look to update their advisories on it and scientists progress the most thorough studies to date into BPA.

The BPA issue occupied part of a fascinating presentation in Auckland today (audio available here) at the New Zealand Food Safety Authority conference, where Queensland University's Professor Gordon Robertson, an expert in food packaging, explained the split in thinking on BPA in the scientific community. Perhaps more importantly, he outlined several food packaging chemicals and techniques - from recycled paper packaging to the ink used on food labels, that don't get the headlines in the same way BPA does, but whose impact on food and human health are poorly understood by the industry creating them and the scientific community in general.

The BPA issue occupied a swathe of the New York Times last week as science writer Denise Grady set out to try and untangle some of the conflicting information out there on BPA. Unfortunately, she isn't able to shed much light on whether Bisphenol-A, a known 'endocrine disruptor' that can mimic the hormone oestrogen, has lasting harmful effects on humans in the small doses it is consumed through us coming into contact with food and liquid that has been stored in bottles containing it.

Plastic liners leach BPA into our food. So why have manufacturers and regulators failed to act?

I'm too lazy a cook not to love cans. Quick, cheap, and recyclable, they've gotten me through many a long, tomatoless winter. Besides, I inherited a kind of a feminist reverence for them - didn't packaged foods help women cast off their domestic chains and all that? But recent research suggests that modern feminists, especially those inclined toward motherhood, might want to think twice before stocking up on Progresso soup.

Peek inside any can and you'll notice a thin film separating your food from the metal. During the 1950s, manufacturers began lining cans with plastic to fend off bacteria that could get into food and drinks if the container corroded. The biggest concern was food-borne botulism, an illness that used to kill six in ten of its victims. Thanks to liners and rigorous sterilization, botulism in commercial canned goods is now pretty rare. Trouble is, most can liners contain bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical that can leach into the food. Last year, the nonprofit Consumers Union found it in 18 of 19 canned foods it tested: Progresso Vegetable Soup topped the list with 22 micrograms of BPA per serving - 116 times Consumers Union's recommended daily limit, which is based on animal studies.

Washington - Antibiotics can temporarily upset your stomach, but now it turns out that repeatedly taking them can trigger long-lasting changes in all those good germs that live in your gut, raising questions about lingering ill effects.

Nobody yet knows if that leads to later health problems. But the finding is the latest in a flurry of research raising questions about how the customized bacterial zoo that thrives in our intestines forms - and whether the wrong type or amount plays a role in ailments from obesity to inflammatory bowel disease to asthma.

Don't be grossed out: This is a story in part about, well, poop. Three healthy adults collected weeks of stool samples so that scientists could count exactly how two separate rounds of a fairly mild antibiotic caused a surprising population shift in their microbial netherworld - as some original families of germs plummeted and other types moved in to fill the gap.

It's also a story of how we coexist with trillions of bacteria, fungi and other microbes in the skin, the nose, the digestive tract, what scientists call the human microbiome. Many are beneficial, even indispensable, especially the gut bacteria that play an underappreciated role in overall health.

"Gut communities are fundamentally important in the development of our immune system," explains Dr. David Relman of Stanford University, who led the antibiotic study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Let's not take them for granted."

Even seemingly gentle antibiotics may severely disrupt the balance of microbes living in the gut, with unforeseen health consequences, U.S. researchers reported on Monday.

An intimate study of three women given ciprofloxacin showed the drug suppressed entire populations of beneficial bacteria, and at least one woman took months to recover.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports the common wisdom that antibiotics can damage the "good" germs living in the body.

Soy Lecithin has been lingering around our food supply for over a century. It is an ingredient in literally hundreds of processed foods, and also sold as an over the counter health food supplement. Scientists claim it benefits our cardiovascular health, metabolism, memory, cognitive function, liver function, and even physical and athletic performance. However, most people don't realize what soy lecithin actually is, and why the dangers of ingesting this additive far exceed its benefits.

Lecithin is an emulsifying substance that is found in the cells of all living organisms. The French scientist Maurice Gobley discovered lecithin in 1805 and named it "lekithos" after the Greek word for "egg yolk." Until it was recovered from the waste products of soybean processing in the 1930s, eggs were the primary source of commercial lecithin. Today lecithin is the generic name given to a whole class of fat-and-water soluble compounds called phospholipids. Levels of phospholipids in soybean oils range from 1.48 to 3.08 percent, which is considerably higher than the 0.5 percent typically found in vegetable oils, but far less than the 30 percent found in egg yolks.

The water is currently around 600 metres below the city's surface but is rising at a rate of between 0.4 and 0.9 metres per day, meaning it could overflow onto the streets in just under a year and a half.

Because it would take 13 months to build a pumping station to clear the water, a legacy of 120 years of mining around Johannesburg, the state has just four months to find the millions of pounds needed to fund it.

It is currently locked in negotiations with multinational mining firms who have profited from the area's rich natural resources over who should pay and how much.

Announcing a task force of experts set up to deal with the issue yesterday, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said she was hoping that the potential dividends from tapping a new water supply for human consumption and use in industry would entice investors.

Acidic water is created when abandoned mine shafts and tunnels fill up with ground water which oxidises with heavy metals and the sulphide mineral iron pyrite, known as "fool's gold" because of its yellowish hue.

Without effective drainage, it pours out into waterways, polluting crops and poisoning those living nearby.

The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten up its image with a new name: corn sugar.

The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans' concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low.

The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the "corn sugar" name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence.

Approval of the new name could take two years, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising. There's a new online marketing campaign and on television. Two new commercials try to alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand that "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."

Renaming products has succeeded before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more popular after becoming "canola oil" in 1988. Prunes tried to shed a stodgy image by becoming "dried plums" in 2000.

A new study from Princeton University reports that a female student of lead investigator, Uri Hasson, can project her own brain activity onto another person, forcing the person's neural activity to closely mirror that in her own brain. The process is otherwise known as speech.

There have been many functional brain-imaging studies involving language, but never before have researchers examined both the speaker's and the listener's brains while they communicate to see what is happening inside each brain. The researchers found that when the two people communicate, neural activity over wide regions of their brains becomes almost synchronous, with the listener's brain activity patterns mirroring those sweeping through the speaker's brain, albeit with a short lag of about one second. If the listener, however, fails to comprehend what the speaker is trying to communicate, their brain patterns decouple.

Expectant mothers in California may want to add one more reminder to their list of what to look for when researching obstetricians--whether the physician in question facilitates births in a non-profit or for-profit hospital.

An analysis by California Watch reveals stark disparities in cesarean section rates between non- and for-profit hospitals in the state. Women in the state are, according to an article written about the newly released analysis, "at least 17 percent more likely to have a cesarean section at a for-profit hospital than at one that operates as a non-profit." The analysis looked at both base rates for c-sections as well as rates among women with low-risk pregnancies.

The differences in c-section rates between certain non- and for-profit hospitals across the state are shocking. Laboring women with low-risk pregnancies at Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Medical Center, a nonprofit hospital, had a 14 percent chance of giving birth via cesarean section. If these same women were to give birth at the for-profit Los Angeles Community Hospital? The likelihood they'd undergo a c-section shoots up to 47 percent; 59 percent if, notes the article, you factor in medically necessary c-sections.

Nationally, cesarean section births account for almost one-third of all births, far above the 10 to 15 percent the World Health Organization deems safe.

While some point to overall changes in maternity patient demographics (older mothers, more mothers pregnant with multiples) and increased maternal request as reasons for this rise, time and again the evidence does not seem to agree.Recently, research undertaken by an NIH organization found that rising rates of labor induction in hospitals around the country contribute to our escalating rate of c-sections. But why are women birthing in hospitals being steered towards more medical intervention if the evidence does not show that it's needed? And how does this connect to whether a hospital operates as a non-profit or for-profit venture?

Kids are heavy consumers of soft drinks, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and they are guzzling soda pop at unprecedented rates.

Carbonated soda pop provides more added sugar in a typical 2-year-old toddler's diet than cookies, candies and ice cream combined.

Fifty-six percent of 8-year-olds down soft drinks daily, and a third of teenage boys drink at least three cans of soda pop per day.