Here's a good reason why food manufacturers don't want to test for harmful chemicals.
If you test, you might find something you don't want to.

Consumer Reports did just that.

It tested a bunch of canned juices, soups, tuna, and green beans and found bisphenol A (BPA) in almost all of them--even the ones labeled organic or bisphenol A-free.

BPA, you may recall, is a chemical in polycarbonate plastics that acts as an endocrine disruptor. How harmful is it? Debate rages. These new data will add to the debate.

CR says it found the highest levels of BPA in some samples of canned green beans and canned soups:

Children with weak memories are more likely to engage in risky behaviors like gambling, using alcohol and drugs and fighting, new research shows.

Daniel Romer of the University of Pennsylvania led the study that followed a group of 387 boys and girls, ages 10-12, in the Philadelphia area.

The implications of the findings, which Romer says are unprecedented, are that kids might be unwilling or even unable to think through the potential consequences of impulsive behavior.

"The kids who are impulsive, they might actually have the working memory, they just don't use it as much," Romer told Discovery News.

If the findings are accurate, Romer says that children who might potentially engage in risky behavior in the future could be identified and steered into a healthier adulthood before they even start their decline.

A new study suggests that the inner sense of our cardiovascular state, our "interoceptive awareness" of the heart pounding, relies on two independent pathways, contrary to what had been asserted by prominent researchers.

The University of Iowa study was published online this week in the journal Nature Neuroscience by researchers in the department of neurology in the Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine and the graduate programs in neuroscience and psychology.

The researchers found that, in addition to a pathway involving the insular cortex of the brain -- the target of most recent research on interoception -- an additional pathway contributing to feeling your own heartbeat exists. The second pathway goes from fibers in the skin to most likely the somatosensory cortex, a part of the brain involved in mapping the outside of the body and the sense of posture.

Night-shift workers should avoid drinking coffee if they wish to improve their sleep, according to research published in the journal Sleep Medicine.

A new study led by Julie Carrier, a Université de Montréal psychology professor and a researcher at the affiliated Hôpital du Sacré-Cœur Sleep Disorders Centre, has found the main byproduct of coffee, caffeine, interferes with sleep and this side-effect worsens as people age.

"Caffeine is the most widely used stimulant to counteract sleepiness, yet it has detrimental effects on the sleep of night-shift workers who must slumber during the day, just as their biological clock sends a strong wake-up signal," says Carrier. "The older you get, the more affected your sleep will be by coffee."

Twenty-four men and women participated in the study: one group was aged 20 to 30, while a second group was aged 45 to 60. Everyone spent two sleepless nights in lab rooms before being allowed to sleep. "We all know someone who claims to sleep like a baby after drinking an espresso. Although they may not notice it, their sleep will not be as deep and will likely be more perturbed," says Professor Carrier.

Three-year-old children who are exposed to more TV appear to be at an increased risk for exhibiting aggressive behavior, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

"Early childhood aggression can be problematic for parents, teachers and childhood peers and sometimes is predictive of more serious behavior problems to come, such as juvenile delinquency, adulthood violence and criminal behavior," according to background information in the article. Various predictive factors for childhood aggression have been studied. These include parents' discipline style, neighborhood safety and media exposure. "After music, television is the medium children aged 0 to 3 years are exposed to the most." Although the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no screen media for children younger than age 2, studies have found consistent use of television in that age group.

Jennifer A. Manganello, Ph.D., M.P.H., of University at Albany, State University of New York, Rensselaer, and Catherine A. Taylor, Ph.D., M.S.W., M.P.H., of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, analyzed data from 3,128 mothers of children born from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities to examine associations of child television exposure and household television use with aggressive behavior in children. Parents were interviewed at the time of the child's birth and at one and three years. At three years, they were asked to report time the child spent watching TV directly as well as household TV use on a typical day. Aggression also was assessed at 3 years of age using a 15-item aggressive subscale for 2- and 3-year-old children. Demographic information and other risk factors for aggression were also noted.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the Technical University of Denmark along with other collaborators in Denmark and the US found that the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa can 'switch on' production of molecules that kill white blood cells -- preventing the bacteria being eliminated by the body's immune system.

P. aeruginosa is responsible for many hospital-acquired infections and also causes chronic infections in those with pre-existing medical conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF). The bacteria cause persistent lung infections by clumping together to form a biofilm, which spreads over the lungs like a slime. Such biofilms are generally resistant to antibiotics as well as the host immune response.

The study showed that P. aeruginosa uses a well-studied communication system called quorum sensing (QS) to detect approaching white blood cells and warn other bacteria in the biofilm. In response to this signal, the bacteria increase their production of molecules called rhamnolipids. These molecules sit on the biofilm surface to form a shield that destroys any white blood cells that encounter it. Interrupting quorum sensing to halt the "launch a shield" response could be a way of treating these bacteria that can resist antibiotics as well as the host immune system.

Adults who had experienced physical abuse as children have 56 per cent higher odds of osteoarthritis compared to those who have not been abused, according to a new study by University of Toronto researchers.

University of Toronto researchers investigated the relationship between self-reported childhood physical abuse and a diagnosis of osteoarthritis (OA). After analyzing representative data from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey, the researchers determined a significant association between childhood physical abuse and osteoarthritis in adulthood.

The study is published in the November issue of the journal Arthritis Care & Research.

Eating a diet high in processed food increases the risk of depression, research suggests.

What is more, people who ate plenty of vegetables, fruit and fish actually had a lower risk of depression, the University College London team found.

Data on diet among 3,500 middle-aged civil servants was compared with depression five years later, the British Journal of Psychiatry reported.

The team said the study was the first to look at the UK diet and depression.

Now it turns out that one of the public school students given the swine flu vaccine without parental consent had to go to the emergency room after getting sick. Six-year-old Nikiyah Torres, who suffers from epilepsy (her parents had been waiting to see what their family doctor said about the swine flu vaccine) told WCBS 2, "He just gave me the needle, without asking me what is my name."

The little girl told the Daily News, "My stomach was hurting, and I was itching," and was taken to the hospital from her school, PS 335 in Brooklyn. According to the News, "When the nurse called for a student Thursday morning, Nikiyah's teacher misunderstood and sent the wrong student, [NIkyah's mother Naomi] Troy said. The error was compounded when the nurse didn't check Nikiyah's name before sticking her in the shoulder."

When the nurse realized what happened, the school called Troy to appear - and the nurse asked her to sign the consent form even though the shot was already given to her daughter. Troy fumed to WCBS 2, "He knew he was in big trouble and he wanted to cover himself."

The News also reports that a third child was given the swine flu vaccine without consent, prompting the nurses' union to say "I told you so" because it had warned about problems with making school nurses responsible for this: "We don't like it when we're right, because usually when we're right someone does get hurt somewhere along the way."

For years, the Church of Scientology chased down and brought back staff members who tried to leave.

Ex-staffers describe being pursued by their church and detained, cut off from family and friends and subjected to months of interrogation, humiliation and manual labor.

One said he was locked in a room and guarded around the clock.

Some who did leave said the church spied on them for years.

Others said that, as a condition for leaving, the church cowed them into signing embellished affidavits that could be used to discredit them if they ever spoke out.

The St. Petersburg Times has interviewed former high-ranking Scientology officials who coordinated the intelligence gathering and supervised the retrieval of staff who left, or "blew."

They say the church, led by David Miscavige, wanted to contain the threat that those who left might reveal secrets of life inside Scientology.