New york (CBS)  -- HERE COMES THE ROADRUNNER SUPERCOMPUTER

 
The fastest supercomputer in the world has been IBM's BlueGeneL, based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.  But now, there's a new military supercomputer, more than twice as fast as that, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

Built by engineers and scientists there, including some from IBM, it's named after the state bird of New Mexico:  the Road Runner.

"Road Runner:  "Meep-meep!"

The new military computer at Los Alamos, the one called the Road Runner, was reportedly assembled from parts originally designed for computer game machines. 

That does not mean it is cheap, however:  the Road Runner cost 133 million dollars, much much more than your laptop.

But then, it was designed to do something that your laptop never is called on to do.  It was designed to solve classified military problems, principally to make sure that this country's stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue to work correctly as they age by simulating what happens in the first fraction of a second after a nuclear explosion.

To work fast enough to keep up with that, the Road Runner has reached a computing milestone ... by processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second.  You know how fast that is?

"Road Runner:  "Meep-meep!"

Faster than that, actually.

Before the Road Runner is placed in a classified environment, it will also be used to explore other scientific problems like climate change, to test global models with greater accuracy.

Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, says if all six billion people on Earth used hand calculators 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Road Runner can do in a day.

Now that's fast...

A TUNE BEFORE EDISON RECORDED SOUND

People often laugh at new ideas when they come along.  As the song says.

"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round. 

They all laughed when Edison recorded sound," Ella Fitzgerald singing "They All Laughed".

Edison, by his own account, recorded sound as far back as 1877.  That's when he got his patent for the phonograph.  But we've got something from 17 years before that.

In 1927, Thomas Edison himself told about what he said was the first phonograph recording, in 1877.

"The first words I spoke in the original phonograph, a little piece of practical poetry:  'Mary had a little lamb / Its fleece was white as snow / And everywhere that Mary went / The lamb was sure to go," said Thomas Edison, in 1927.

It wasn't until 1931 that the French folk song "Au Clair de la Lune" was recorded with guitar accompaniment by French singer Yvonne Printemps.

But an American audio historian, David Giannini, has come across what was called a "phoneautogram" made in 1860 by a Frenchman, Edouard Leon Scott de Martinville, of that same song sung apparently by a child recorded on paper blackened with smoke from an oil lamp, intended not to be heard, but as a visual copy.

That has now been digitalized.  And here it is:  barely hearable, but remember this was 1860.

"Au Clair de La Lune" recording from 1860"

So, there's what might be the oldest recording the world, 17 years before Edison recorded sound.

THE PHASING IN AND OUT OF FAT CELLS
 

In the years between the time that we are born and time we die, there are cells in our body that die and other cells that are born to replace them.

According to a recent study in the online edition of the journal "Nature," the number of fat cells in our bodies always stays the same once we reach adulthood. 

And every year, we lose about ten percent of our fat cells, only to have new ones form.  And that remains true whether we lose weight or gain weight, and whether we're fat or trim.

That is a completely new way of looking at obesity, and one that raises some fascinating questions.

No wonder it's so hard to keep weight off. 

When you go on a diet and lose weight, it does not mean that you've changed the number of fat cells in your body.  It simply means that the cells shrank. 

But according to obesity researchers, this signals the cells that have shrunk to fill up again.

Obese people who've had weight loss surgery may be thinner two years later, but they have just as many fat cells as ever. 

You many not know how many fat cells you have in your total body, but your body does and enough new cells form to exactly replace the ones that the surgeons cut out.

Some of your cells are a lot younger than you are.  You are not your old self, and neither am I.

When a man has been on death row for ten or 15 years, the person executed may be the same person who committed the crime. 

But the collection of cells that make up the human organism will be quite different.

But now that we know our fat cells are born and die several times in our lifetimes, what can we do about it?  Stay tuned.

GETTING UNDER THE SKIN OF THE DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS
 

For convenience and orderly study, scientists have classified living organisms by genus, species and the like. 

You and I, being homo sapiens, are mammals, primates specifically in the same class as chimps and other monkeys. 

Scientists believe that all mammals evolved from reptiles snakes and lizards and the like. 
That's not quite as obvious.

But from Australia comes word that they have now completely mapped the genome of an animal unlike any other:  the duck-billed platypus. 

What happened?  Did a duck mate with a beaver?  Did a snake mate with a bird?

The platypus is classified as a mammal because it has fur and feeds its young with milk.  It has a beaver like tail which it flaps, a duck-like beak and webbed feet. 

The females lay eggs, and males have venom-filled spurs on their heels.

We used to say if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's a duck. 

Well, ducks don't talk, with the notable exception of Donald and his family. 

Well, platypuses don't talk, either.  And they're not ducks, they're not birds of any kind.

But this genome study suggests that platypuses, I don't know if that's the plural, and we humans were on the same evolutionary path until 165 million years or so ago, when the platypus branched off retaining the characteristics of snakes and lizards, including the pain-causing venom the male uses to ward off mating rivals.

It is found only in Australia and so strange-looking that when the British Museum received its first specimen in 1798, the zoologist George Shaw was so dubious he tried to cut the pelt with scissors to make sure the duck-like bill hadn't been stitched on by a taxidermist.

It's a pretty weird-looking creature, alright. 

But then, to the rest of the animal kingdom, I'll bet you and I must look a little weird, too.