Can anyone accurately forecast the result of the London Olympics while they are a week away?

Even more daring, can they forecast results without in depth knowledge of athlete training?

Economists at Ruhr-Universität Bochum are taking a shot at it and, if it sounds like complete madness, we'll go ahead and spoil it and tell you they believe that China, USA, and Russia will top the score table with 102, 100, and 71 medals, respectively, so you can move on to another article. 

But if you are interested in the nuts and bolts, read on.  You can decide if this is mumbo-jumbo or solid science.

Can modern physicists examine ancient myths and teach us about modern social networks, even science ones like Science 2.0?

Pesky humanities types are always butting into science and a new article in EPL (Europhysics Letters) turns the tables.  Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from Coventry University performed detailed text analyses of the Iliad, Beowulf and the Táin Bó Cuailnge and found that the interactions between the characters in all three myths were consistent with those seen in real-life social networks. Taking this further, the researchers compared the myths to four known works of fiction -- Les Misérables, Richard III, Fellowship of the Ring, and Harry Potter -- and found clear differences.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are teaming up to provide $32 million for development of a technology platform that will mimic human physiological systems in the laboratory, using an array of integrated, interchangeable engineered human tissue constructs - a human body on a chip.

The new program is called “Barrier-Immune-Organ: MIcrophysiology, Microenvironment Engineered TIssue Construct Systems” (BIO-MIMETICS) and includes the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MatTek Corp. and Zyoxel Ltd.

In the 1990s, life was simpler for environmentalists.  Crippling the logging industry was all that was needed to protect trees and birds.  

But, as in abortion or gun control, you have to sue everyone or you can sue no one and even responsible logging and clearing brush was stopped by environmental lawsuits and as a result, wildfires have become far more frequent and far more devastating.  Now add a new wrinkle - no logging is leading to more global warming.

NASA's Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3), a large inflatable heat shield developed, was launched by sounding rocket at 7:01 a.m. Monday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va.  It successfully survived a trip through Earth's atmosphere while traveling at hypersonic speeds of 7,600 mph.

At the time of diagnosis, hundreds of mutations already exist in leukemia cells but new research has found they are a part of normal aging and are not related to cancer.

Even in healthy people, stem cells in the blood routinely accumulate new mutations over the course of a person’s lifetime. In many cases only two or three additional genetic changes are required to transform a normal blood cell already dotted with mutations into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).