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First principles are calculations that rely on established mathematical laws of nature without additional assumptions or special models.
But when it comes to the early universe, what are those first principles? We're talking really ab initio - "from the beginning" - as in from the beginning of time onward.  
In the beginning, the cosmos experienced rapid inflation, electrons and protons floated free from each other, the universe transitioned from complete darkness to light, and enormous stars formed and exploded to start a cascade of events leading to our present-day universe.

Stock price movements are predictable during short windows, according to a paper written by academics in the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa.
They write that price movements can be predicted with a better than 50-50 accuracy for anywhere up to one minute after the stock leaves the confines of its bid-ask spread. Probabilities continue to be significant until about five minutes after it leaves the spread. By 30 minutes, the predictability window has closed.

We're all capable of committing violence. The person who truly cannot commit violence is quite rare, and likely learned it. Some aspects of behavior depend on interactions in the brain between genetic and environmental factors. And so, it is said, an individual may be more vulnerable to developing violent behaviors if they have predisposing factors and then undergo stress, abuse, or other triggers, especially early in life.  Neurobiologists have also documented numerous examples of sex differences in the human brain, including differences in brain regions and circuits relevant to violent behavior. 

States that have decriminalized marijuana have also seen dramatic increases in children requiring medical intervention, according to research in the Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Association of Unintentional Pediatric Exposures with Decriminalization of Marijuana in the U.S.") which analyzed call volume to U.S. poison centers from January 2005 through December 2011. 

Men, if you want a short term thing and not a lot of talks about "us" and "the relationship", your odds improve if your parents gave you the gift of a wider face.
Women see wider faces as more dominant, and therefore more attractive, at least for short-term relationships. At around age 30, women start to prefer men with jobs and stable personalities.
And since this was a study of speed dating participants, it's probably true, for speed dating participants.

Insects taste through hair-like structures on the body called  sensilla.  Sensilla contain receptor nerve cells, each of which is sensitive to a particular substance.
In insects like the honeybee, sensilla are found on the mouthparts, antenna and the tarsi – the end part of the legs. Honeybees weigh information from both front tarsi to decide whether to feed, finds a new study on the ability of honeybees to taste with claws on their forelegs, which reveals details on how this information is processed.

A new study found that the ability to follow another's gaze or look in the direction someone is pointing, two examples of receptive joint attention, is significantly heritable.
Determining such communicative cues are significantly heritable means variation in this ability has a genetic basis, the authors say, which has led them to the vasopressin receptor gene, known for its role in social bonding.
They are looking for insight into the biology of disorders in which receptive joint attention is compromised, such as autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which could lead to new diagnosis and treatment strategies.

In 2005,the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa  revealed that the near-Earth asteroid (25143) Itokawa  has a strange peanut shape, leading to questions about why. Now, using ground-based observations, a group has measured the speed at which Itokawa spins and how that spin rate is changing over time and combined these observations with theoretical work on how asteroids radiate heat.

'Whole Grain', like 'Natural' and 'Organic', has a lot of definitions. Fortunately for marketing departments, people often read their own positive definitions into those terms.But people invariably pay more for all of those things, so if they pay for organic, they deserve to know if it has any of dozens of synthetic ingredients (it probably does) or the levels of pesticides on it. And the same for other food terms. Toward that end, writers in Food and Nutrition Research have set out to create the most comprehensive definition of "whole grain" to-date, in order to assist in the production and labeling of foods 'rich in whole grains' as part of the HEALTHGRAIN EU project, which focuses on cereals and health.

In the MGM musical "Gigi", Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold perform "I Remember It Well", wherein everything they remember contradicts each other.
It's a charming number, and accurate, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. Our memory, the authors write, takes fragments of the present and inserts them into past memories. Recollections are updated with current information.

Sometimes it's just public relations. We subsidize nicotine patches but regulators are increasingly interested in banning electronic cigarettes.
Such misguided legislation, not backed by sound data, may have consequences for public health, experts say. With smoking blamed for up to six million premature deaths each year, a lot is at stake in the newest push for regulations.

A new paper correlates brain activity with how people make decisions.
Based on these images, the authors suggest that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it's not because their brains' desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough. 
Defense lawyers now have a new way to make criminal behavior exculpatory. Unless the judge knows something about the weaknesses of inferring cause and effect based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and read this article about how mainstream media love weak observational studies because they make for catchy headlines.