When you see an article about geckos and their ability to sit upside down, Spider-Man references are sure to follow. And if the topic is that sticky ability in spiders, you will get Spider-Man references and a picture.

Yet even geckos have limits - that's just plain nanophysics.

The fact is, sooner or later the grip is lost, no matter how little force is acting on it. But knowing the limits can have considerable benefits, for instance in the production of graphene - because graphene consists only of one layer of atom, and which must be easily detached from the substrate.

250 miles above Earth, in the  International Space Station, ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has recently shared some incredible views - some is the usual stuff, Hurricane Arthur on the US East coast, beautiful auroras.

And then there was Super Typohoon Neoguri. This was not Superstorm Sandy, a hyped up tropical storm that benefited from dumping rain on media companies in midtown Manhattan, this was a true super typhoon, with winds of 150 miles per hour and an eye, the center of the typhoon, that was 40 miles wide. One third of Okinawa was evacuated. Nago, Okinawa had over 17 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. 

It's the strongest storm of the season so far and it hasn't even hit mainland Japan yet.

If global warming is causing extinction, it isn't happening to Adélie penguins in the Southern Ocean.

Adélie penguins have long been considered a key indicator species to monitor in order to understand the effects of climate change and fishing in the Southern Ocean. New evidence shows that the population is 3.79 million breeding pairs - 53 percent larger than previously estimated.  

Molecular microbiologists have discovered that mice lacking a specific component of the immune system are completely resistant to sepsis, a potentially fatal complication of infection.

The immune system is the body's first line of defense against infection. The system, however, can also injure the body if it is not turned off after the infection is destroyed, or if it is turned on when there is no infection at all. Scientists do not yet fully understand how the immune response is turned on and off and continue to study it in hopes of harnessing its power to cure disease.

In this study, scientists have found that a component of the system, HOIL-1L, is necessary for formation of the NLRP3-ASC inflammasome signaling complex.

ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft is on the last leg of its epic voyage to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the first rendezvous with a comet.

Every kid has asked 'Are we there yet?' in the car.  It's hard to imagine how many times that question would be asked after 10 years and nearly 4 billion miles.

Now there is just a relatively short 12,000 miles to go a and it is expected to arrive August 6th. To commemorate the momentous milestone of reaching the comet, ESA is inviting you to take part in a photo contest celebrating journeys and arrivals. Up for grabs is the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be at ESA’s operations center in Germany in November, for the VIP event celebrating the first landing on a comet.

A new study found that using cinnamon, the common food spice and flavoring material, can reverse the biomechanical, cellular and anatomical changes that occur in the brains of mice with Parkinson's disease.