Strange & Offbeat News -- ScienceDaily

Perfect NCAA bracket? Near impossible: Mathematician says Posted: 02 Mar 2015 11:10 AM PST The odds of picking a perfect bracket for the NCAA men's basketball March Madness championship tournament are a staggering less than one in 9.2 quintillion (that's 9,223,372,036,854,775,808), according to a mathematics professor.

Is 'the dress' white and gold or blue and black? Visual perception expert weighs in Posted: 02 Mar 2015 10:42 AM PST On Feb. 26, a picture of a cocktail dress originally uploaded to the blog Tumblr swept the Internet and managed to divide the population over a simple question: What color is the dress? Some viewers saw gold and white while others insisted the dress is blue and black. Some people claimed they could see either interpretation, but only one of them at a time. It made people stop and ask, "What exactly is going on with this image?"

Colon + septic tank = unique, at times stinky, study Posted: 02 Mar 2015 10:08 AM PST What do a human colon, septic tank, copper nanoparticles and zebrafish have in common? They were the key components used by researchers to study the impact copper nanoparticles, which are found in everything from paint to cosmetics, have on organisms inadvertently exposed to them.

Pens filled with high-tech inks for do-it-yourself sensors Posted: 02 Mar 2015 10:07 AM PST A new simple tool developed by nanoengineers is opening the door to an era when anyone will be able to build sensors, anywhere, including physicians in the clinic, patients in their home and soldiers in the field. Scientists have developed high-tech inks that react with several chemicals, including glucose. They tested the sensors to measure glucose and pollution.

Swarmies shuffle through field tests Posted: 02 Mar 2015 09:30 AM PST Months of lab work has led to this chilly day -- by Florida standards -- with four small, wheeled robots moving around the parking lot outside the Launch Control Center while their leader, Kurt Leucht, keeps electronic tabs on them using a laptop. He carries the laptop around as he tracks each of the four machines, occasionally tapping one off an obstacle or looking at the vehicle's line of sight to figure out what its sensors are seeing.

First ever photograph of light as a particle and a wave Posted: 02 Mar 2015 07:47 AM PST Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of light at the same time. Now, scientists have succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of this dual behavior.

Archaeologists open mysterious lead coffin found buried just feet from the former grave of King Richard III Posted: 02 Mar 2015 04:11 AM PST Richard III is the only male to be discovered at infamous former car-park site. A mysterious lead coffin found close to the site of Richard III's hastily dug grave at the Grey Friars friary has now been opened.