Eating foods that contain common preservative food additives may increase the risks of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, according to research published in the European Heart Journal.

The research was led by Dr. Mathilde Touvier, a research director at INSERM (the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research), and Anaïs Hasenböhler, Ph.D. student, both from the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Université Paris Cité, France.

Ms. Hasenböhler said, “Food preservatives are used in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods...

A research team at Google co-led by Michael Brenner, Catalyst Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Google research scientist, has produced a new artificial intelligence system that can automatically write scientific software programs that surpass the performance of human-written programs. The paper is published in the journal Nature.

How the ERA system came together
The system is called Empirical Research Assistance (ERA), and the project was co-led by Brenner and Shibl Mourad from Google DeepMind. Harvard Ph.D. students Qian-Ze Zhu, Ryan Krueger, and Sarah Martinson contributed as Google student researchers while working in Brenner’s group...

A hidden magnetic twist inside the Milky Way may rewrite what scientists know about how our galaxy is held together. Astronomers have uncovered a strange magnetic “flip” hidden inside the Milky Way. Using a new radio telescope, researchers mapped the galaxy’s magnetic field in unprecedented detail and discovered that a mysterious reversal in the Sagittarius Arm cuts diagonally across space. The finding could reshape how scientists understand the structure and future evolution of our galaxy.

For hundreds of years, astronomers have studied the night sky in an effort to understand ...

Adults should aim to do between 560 and 610 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity to achieve a substantial reduction in the risk of heart attacks and stroke, suggest the findings of an observational study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This is between three to four times higher than the current public health recommendation that adults do at least 150 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical exercise such as brisk walking, running, or cycling.

People who are less fit need to do slightly more exercise than those who are very fit to get the same cardiovascular benefits, the study suggests.

The researchers say that the current one-size-fits-all advice on exercise may need to be changed and replaced ...