Draught-proofing can cut gas bills by 10% by merely putting sticky tape around windows and doors.

BBC: Gas prices rising: Can you cut your bill by 15%?

True, a preoccupation with the relative merits of various types of decorative sticky tape is not for everyone.

ECONOMIST: Hobbies

Fiddling with the little brushes, fine powders and sticky tape can test the patience of the most fastidious crime-scene investigator.

ECONOMIST: Forensic technology

The witness told the court that several samples taken using sticky tape to pick up skin cells showed a mixture of DNA from two or three individuals.

BBC: Lynda Spence

They said they covered Ms Chavez's face in sticky tape until she suffocated and cut off her hand to make her murder look like a gangland execution.

BBC: Youths who murdered Mexican activist Chavez sentenced

Remodelled with sticky tape into maces and clubs, their weight and sharp edges can gouge or bludgeon in the hands of those bent on vengeance or extortion.

ECONOMIST: Unlocking the books in a prison library

In one of such sessions, together with his doctoral student Konstantin Novoselov, he used a piece of ordinary sticky tape (which allegedly they found in a bin) to peel off a very thin layer of graphite, taken from a pencil.

FORBES: Research by Mucking About

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, of the University of Manchester, made graphene in 2004 using what may be the simplest experiment ever to win a Nobel prize: they peeled it off the surface of a piece of graphite using sticky tape.

ECONOMIST: The 2010 Nobel prizes

It suffered from short-circuits, faulty radio and power systems, an unreliable tape-recorder, a sticky camera platform, and the loss of much of the gas that supplied its stabilising thrusters a problem overcome by repositioning its solar panels and main antenna so that they acted as solar sails, stabilising the probe via the gentle pressure of sunlight.

ECONOMIST: The long arm of the celestial repairman