The tubes are about three nanometres in diameter and six nanometres long.

ECONOMIST: Nanotechnology in biology

Three-quarters claim to brush their teeth twice a day, squeezing out an average of four toothpaste tubes a year, against three in Britain.

ECONOMIST: France��s bathroom blues

Dr Smith has bred about 3, 000 spiders in her kitchen in individual test tubes until they were three months old.

BBC: Rare fen raft spiders breeding in Suffolk

Tiny carbon tubes can be used to hide three-dimensional objects from view, according to a team of researchers.

BBC: Carbon nanotubes experiment results

Suffolk Wildlife Trust helped erect nest tubes and later found dormice in three of them, with a further six containing nests.

BBC: Dormouse in hand

The red, green and blue components of the signal are fed into three separate high-definition cathode-ray tubes (in effect, fancy black-and-white televisions).

ECONOMIST: Curtains for celluloid

Over the course of two years it funds three dozen PC disk-drive companies, all as alike as tubes of toothpaste.

FORBES: Digital Rules

The general sense is that the TSA has mostly stopped calling out travelers who leave their deadly tubes of toothpaste in their bags or dare to carry more than three ounces of shampoo.

FORBES: Business Travel Rivalries To Be Sorted Out