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For years, federal physical activity guidelines have told Americans how much time they should spend moving each week: at least 150 minutes, or 75 minutes if workouts are particularly vigorous. But the popularity of wearable fitness devices has made many people obsessively track their step counts instead, often shooting for the goal of 10,000 per day (even though some studies suggest that number is arbitrary).Is the length of your workout or your daily step count a better measure of wellness?“Both are good metrics,” says Dr. Rikuta Hamaya, a preventive-medicine researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and lead author of the new study. But Hamaya and his colleagues wanted to know if one was better than the other, so they designed a head-to-head comparison. The resulting study, pu...

(WASHINGTON) — Cyberattacks against water utilities across the country are becoming more frequent and more severe, the Environmental Protection Agency warned Monday as it issued an enforcement alert urging water systems to take immediate actions to protect the nation's drinking water.About 70% of utilities inspected by federal officials over the last year violated standards meant to prevent cyberthreats, the agency said. Officials urged even small water systems to improve protections against cyberattacks, noting that recent assaults from adversarial nation states like Russia and Iran have impacted water systems of all sizes.Some water systems are falling short in basic ways, the alert said, including failure to change default passwords or cut off system access to former employees. Because ...

People with HIV can breastfeed their babies, as long as they are taking medications that effectively suppress the virus that causes AIDS, a top U.S. pediatricians’ group said Monday in a sharp policy change.The new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics reverses recommendations it had in place since the start of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s.It recognizes that routinely prescribed drugs can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV via breast milk to less than 1%, said Dr. Lisa Abuogi, a pediatric HIV expert at the University of Colorado and lead author of the report.“The medications are so good now and the benefits for mom and baby are so important that we are at a point where it is important to engage in shared decision-making,” Abuogi said.The drugs, known as antiretroviral therapy, d...