Study

Perhaps Americans aren't so enamored with the stock market. More than three-quarters of individual investors say in a new survey that agonizingly low interest rates are not coaxing them into stocks. According to the study by personal-finance website Bankrate.com, 76% of people are not more inclined to invest in equities because of rock-bottom rates on bank savings accounts and certificates of deposit. That's roughly the same percentage who shied away from stocks in a survey by Bankrate.com last year.

Have you loved R2-D2 and C-3PO since you were a kid? Do you have a soft spot in your in your heart for WALL-E? Did you used to play with Furbies and care for a Tamagotchi digital pet? Can the sight of a Roomba roaming your living room bring a tender smile to your face? Attention all you robot lovers: Scientists are here to tell you that your affection for these machines is normal. In fact, when we see people interacting with robots, our brains react in much the same way as when we see people interacting with each other.

A new study attributes a slowdown in U.S. healthcare spending to the recent recession and predicts more rapid growth as the economy strengthens. The report issued Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation seeks to shed light on the reasons behind the recent drop-off. The analysis found that economic factors related to the recession accounted for 77% of the reduced growth in national healthcare spending, which totaled an estimated $2.8 trillion in 2012. The remaining 23% resulted from changes in the healthcare system, such as higher patient deductibles and other changes made by insurers and medical providers, the study said.

Think of the adage that if you want something done, get the busy person to do it. People who change their diet and start exercising at the same time - as opposed to doing them one at a time - were more successful, researchers at Stanford School of Medicine found. Few studies have looked at dietary change and exercise together, and the few studies that look at how to introduce more than one healthy change into people's lives are conflicting, the researchers said in the journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Expand or die. This ominous motto of economic imperialism courses throughout the film "At Any Price," set against the imperiled world of modern-day family farming. Director Ramin Bahrani, who co-wrote the screenplay with Hallie Elizabeth Newton, spent six months in Iowa living among farmers as the duo spoke to people about the issues facing their lives and businesses. The film grapples with enduring issues of generational conflict and transition as well as the perennial drama of success and failure in America.

Babies wise up fast. By the time infants are 3 months old, their unfinished brains are laced with a trillion connections, and the collective weight of all those firing neurons triples in a year. But the indecipherable babbling and maladroit wiggling so beloved by parents just leave scientists in baby labs scratching their heads. What do those little people know, and when do they know it? A team of French neuroscientists who compared brain waves of adults and babies has come up with a tentative answer: At 5 months, infants appear to have the internal architecture in place to perceive objects in adult-like ways, even though they can't tell us. "I think we have a pretty nice answer," said Sid Kouider of the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, whose findings were published Friday in the journal Science.

Cigarette smoking may have earned a reputation as an unhealthy, cancer-causing pastime, but water pipes seem to have largely evaded the stigma. Now, new research shows that water pipes may simply be dangerous in slightly different ways, according to a study in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. Water pipes, also known as hookah, shisha and a host of other aliases, are a common social activity in the Middle East and have been growing in popularity: a 2011 study found more than 40% of college students had used a hookah , and many of them appeared to believe it was safer than cigarette smoking.

Looming student debt could hamper future economic growth as young people tamp down on spending and borrowing in the years to come. Compared with counterparts not saddled with student loans, these young workers are less likely to take out mortgages or car loans, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It's a potentially worrying sign that these workers may be less optimistic about their future earning potential because of the millstone of student loans. Last year, 43% of 25-year-olds had incurred at least some student debt, up from 25% in 2003, the study said.

Academic researchers and federal scientists have for the first time come up with direct evidence of feral cats killing endangered Hawaiian petrels. The study, by scientists from the University of Hawaii, the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Survey, confirms what has been widely suspected, that wild cats are playing an important role in the population decline of the rare birds. The study involved monitoring of 14 Hawaiian petrel burrows with digital infrared video cameras in 2007 and 2008 on the island of Hawaii.

Eli (played by rising theater star Seth Numrich) is an openly gay high school student who has been transplanted from the San Francisco Bay Area to Iowa after the tragic death of his father. His English professor mother (a gritty Wendy vanden Heuvel) has accepted a job in the Midwest and is eager to start a new life with her son. Eli, feeling like the freak newcomer at his school, resents her for inflicting this culture shock on him but even more he resents her for trying to be happy.