In the news this week... A nanoscale scale. Changing driver behavior -- wirelessly. Advertising on mobile phones. Antisocial behavior and unattached males. Going east for opportunity. South America's vanishing water. Guessing the future -- wrong.

SCIENCE

Top Story: Carbon-Nanotube 'Strings' May ID Single Molecules - [New Scientist] Nanoscale "guitar strings" that vibrate at more than one billion times per second could detect and identify individual molecules. The device may even let researchers study the quantum behaviour of molecules, and possibly even viruses.

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TECHNOLOGY

Top Story: Market Forces vs. Traffic Jams - [Technology Review] In a few places around the world--such as downtown London -- drivers pay higher tolls for entering city centers at peak rush hour. The idea of "congestion pricing" is to reduce traffic and pollution by giving drivers an incentive to travel at off-peak times. Now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin has shown how a complex extension of this idea could greatly speed up rush-hour traffic flow throughout an entire network of highways and secondary roads in a U.S. metropolitan region.

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BUSINESS

Top Story: On Advertising: Pitching via Cell - [International Herald Tribune] The mobile phone, the pitch goes, could be the most powerful marketing tool ever invented. Until recently, however, cellphones have been mostly about talking the talk (or texting the text). Now, from an advertising perspective, there are signs that they may be starting to walk the walk. Worldwide, there are twice as many cellphones as PCs, and in developed countries, at least, most new phones can provide access to the mobile Internet.

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SOCIETY

Top Story: Too Many Men Could Destabilize Society - [Eurekalert] Cultures that favor male babies have bred a surplus of men who will struggle to find sexual partners and could find themselves marginalized in society, warns a new paper co-authored by a University College London researcher. As more men discover their lack of marriage prospects, this could lead to antisocial behavior, violence and possibly more opportunities for organized crime and terrorism, threatening the stability and security of many societies.

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GLOBAL POLITICS

Top Story: Indians Head Home in 'Brain Gain' - [BBC] For much of the last century India suffered a "brain drain". Generations of Indians set off in search of a better life in other countries. Today, an estimated 25 million people of Indian origin live overseas. But could the tide be turning? India's breakneck economic growth seems to be enticing the country's scattered diaspora back to the motherland. In Bangalore, one of India's booming high-tech centres, an estimated 35,000 overseas Indians have set up home.

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ENVIRONMENT

Top Story: Cities in Peril as Andean Glaciers Melt - [Guardian Unlimited] Andean glaciers are melting so fast that some are expected to disappear within 15-25 years, denying major cities water supplies and putting populations and food supplies at risk in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Ecuador, Argentina and Bolivia.

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THE FUTURE

Top Story: Andy Goes Back To The Future - [CBS News] CBS News has a good library of old film and tape. They got out the CBS Evening News broadcasts for 20 years ago to see what was happening in 1986... and found a five-part series predicting what things would be like in 15 years – in 2001.

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Featured Book: Future Frequencies by Derek Woodgate and Wayne R. Pethrick Resource Page

Featured Link: Future Monitor - FutureMonitor™ is a global community that capitalizes on the collective intelligence and predictive capacities of diverse human networks -- the “wisdom of crowds.”

Audio Clip: Loot: Real Money in Virtual Worlds [ABC National Radio] - Virtual worlds are flourishing as millions of online players move in to set up their virtual lives. There are fortunes to be made, and there are real world consequences.