Technology & Digital Life

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta delivered a policy speech that he said was a "clarion call" for Americans to take cyber security seriously. Attacks that can cripple a country, he said, are no longer theoretical.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told business leaders the Pentagon is developing capabilities to ward off attacks on the nation's infrastructure. He says foreign actors have already probed key systems that could cause damage and even death — and the Pentagon has a key role to play in stopping such efforts.

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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

They are ubiquitous. They're in our cars, our computers, our TVs and the remotes that control them. They light up our streets and, increasingly, our homes. I'm talking about Light Emitting Diodes, better known as LEDs. It was 50 years ago this week that they were invented.

NICK HOLONYAK: In a way, I knew right away from how powerful this result was that we were in the right direction.

Though it's been around for three decades, 3-D printing has finally started to take off for manufacturing and even for regular consumers. It's being used for making airplane parts on demand and letting kids make their own toys. One designer is pushing the limits of 3-D printing by using it to make an acoustic guitar.

David Wineland is the American half of the scientific duo celebrating the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics today.

Wineland and French scientist Serge Haroche developed new ways for scientists to observe individual quantum particles without damaging them. This may not sound so impressive, but the work opens a world of possibilities— including the development of a quantum computer and super-precise clock.

But who needs a better clock? Don't we have pretty good ones already?

^{Dante Chinni is the director of Patchwork Nation, which uses demographic, voting and cultural data to study communities. It is part of the nonpartisan, not-for-profit Jefferson Institute, which teamed with NPR to examine what can be learned about different communities through online text analysis. The project had Knight Foundation funding.}

Since the beginning of the Great Recession, unemployment has driven much of the national conversation, and with good reason.