Meant to be a guide for policymakers, the report did not attribute the changes in climate to any one factor, but made note of continued increases in heat-trapping greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

 

"Our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," said Kathryn Sullivan, acting administrator of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The report was edited by NOAA scientists and drew contributions from 384 scientists from 52 countries.

 

The report's data indicate "new normal" conditions that can inform planning decisions, instead of relying on models that "count on the future being statistically a lot like the past," Sullivan said at a news briefing.

 

Global surface temperatures - land and water - were the eighth or ninth warmest, depending on which data set was used, since recordkeeping began in the late 1800s, the report found.

 

However, in the decade leading up to 2012, global temperatures actually declined by .09 degree F (.05 degree C), according to Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Karl said the 50-year trend indicates global temperatures have consistently increased about .27 degree F (.15 degree C) per decade.

 

The recent decrease in temperatures has been noted by climate change skeptics who question the impact of human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide, on climate.

 

However, other changes detailed in the report paint a more complex picture:

 

Sea levels reached a record high, after a sharp decrease in 2011 possibly linked to the Pacific Ocean phenomenon La Nina, which can have a cooling effect;

Arctic sea ice shrank to its smallest summer minimum since satellite records began 34 years ago, while Antarctic sea ice reached a record high.

 

More than 97 percent of the ice sheet covering Greenland melted at least a bit in the summer of 2012, four times greater than the 1981-2010 average;

Average sea surface temperatures rose, but not much, making 2012 among the 11th warmest years on record;

 

Ocean heat was near record high levels in the upper half-mile of the water, and temperatures also increased in the deep ocean.

 

Metabolix, a bioplastics company founded in 1992, is one of a small group of companies and universities pushing at a new frontier in bioplastics: The genetic engineering of crops to produce plastics materials. The efforts – unique in making bioplastics not from, but in, crops – put forward a solution to the longstanding problem in bioplastics: How to make the production costs of bioplastics as cheap as, or cheaper than, oil-based plastics.

 

The answer, these scientists say, is in plants: What if crops, planted in droves across the United States’ farm fields, could become quiet, tiny plastics factories, churning out all the plastics we need?

Bioplastics, simply put, are plastics made from renewable biomass resources as opposed to fossil fuels. Billed as a potentially cheaper and more sustainable alternative to conventional oil-produced plastics, bioplastics are a fledgling industry, and, so far, both eco-friendliness and cheapness have not been achieved in one product.

 

At the moment, bioplastics are often made from corn, a controversial wing of the industry, as studies have found that the fallout from the chemical use that goes into growing the corn outweighs the potential environmental benefits of using corn-based plastic. 

 

Other means of producing bioplastics, such as using bacteria to ferment sugars into polymers, remain more expensive than using fossil fuels, given the vast industrial infrastructure that supports conventional plastics-making.

 

Bioplastics

 

In short, the big problem in bioplastics is much the same as it is throughout the entire bioindustrial field: eco-friendly, in the short term at least, is not cheap.

 

“It all comes down to a bottom-line: Bioplastics won't ever be competitive with petro-chemical plastics if their cost is higher,” said Stevens Brumbley, a professor of molecular biology at the University of North Texas whose team whose team works with sugarcane-derived plastics and shares funds and findings with Metabolix.

 

In 2001, Metabolix bought GMO giant Monsanto’s decade of research on using plants to make plastics. That year, the company began tinkering with the genome of switchgrass – a grass that Oliver Peoples, a former researcher at MIT and the founder of Metabolix, says meets all the conditions for it to be deployed toward plastics production: It is a perennial crop with a high tolerance for erratic weather, it has a high biomass and, for the moment, it does not contribute to the human food supply, meaning that it won’t be much missed if fields of it are marshaled toward plastics-making.

 

“It just fundamentally makes sense,” said Dr. Peoples. “What’s the most abundant source of carbon? Carbon dioxide. What are the most efficient fixers of carbon dioxide? Plants.”

 

But what is simple in theory is, it turns out, difficult in practice. Plants are good at turning carbon dioxide into sugar, not into compounds for plastics. 

 

So turning the plant into a small plastics manufacturer requires some high-tech genetic engineering. That begins with modifying switchblade grass cells to have three genes that produce a compound called polyhydroxybutyrate, or PHB. Those genes are borrowed from the soil-based bacteria that are at the moment used to produce much of the PHB used in bio-plastics engineering.

 

"In this field, being called crazy is a compliment,” said Maria Somleva, a researcher at Metabolix, as she held a warm petri dish dotted with cell cultures modified to, well, behave a bit like bacteria.

 

After a few weeks, those cells begin to grow a tiny, pinprick-sized sprout of green: A new plant. Once big enough, the plants are bagged and transferred to the lab’s greenhouse to be potted. There, they’ll grow into a tall, pale green grass with seed-laced fibers dangling elegantly from its tips, producing in their thin stalks not just glucose, but PHB.

 

(Source: The Christian Science Monitor)

 

The vehicle, which weighs less than 600kg, is designed specifically to meet the needs of city travelers in sunny south-European regions, and has a maximum speed of 100km/h and a range of 20km. 

 

The "vehicle's performance met our expectations for the design. It showed very high stability on small radius curves and had an average energy consumption of around 80 Watt-hours per kilometer," said Pietro Perlo, CEO of Interactive Fully Electrical Vehicles (IFEVS), who has coordinated the project.  The vehicle has been tested last month at Fiat's testing track in Turin.

 

Having been awarded €2.8m of funding, the recently concluded P-MOB project brought together several European companies and research institutions including Germany’s Siemens, Spain’s Mazel, Italy’s Fiat and Polimodel and UK’s Magnetomatics and the University of Sheffield.

 

The "design has met the highest safety ranking, a low footprint and extremely low energy consumption, making the vehicle ideal for most people's needs in cities as well as suburban roads," Perlo said.

 

The team focused on several shortcomings of existing electric vehicles and tried to perfect them – more efficient solar cells, e-motor and magnetic torque control, better accumulators and technologies to enable e-vehicles to put power back into the grid when they don’t use it.

 

The integrated ICT-based control systems used in the car allow two motors and two differentials operating at the same time. The vehicle's front and rear axles are thus independent, providing effective four-wheel drive, as well as variation of the torque ratio, depending on driving conditions.

 

"Our vehicle is the first with a two-motor powertrain with one motor per axle," Perlo said.

 

Such a solution, the researchers believe, increases vehicle control on small radius curves, improves adherence on wet and icy roads, and provides faster acceleration without drawing more power. Similarly to passenger aircraft, if one motor fails the other will enable the journey to continue without compromising safety.

 

At the same time, the team has been working on the design elements to boost the efficiency of the solely solar-powered city car. They looked at several building blocks, including aerodynamic design to reduce drag and lightweight, low-cost but safe bodies.

 

 

"We have two doors on one side only, ensuring a high degree of safety, better ergonomics and reduced complexity with extremely low aerodynamic drag - around 30 per cent lower than other vehicles of the same dimensions," said Perlo.

 

The car’s smart photovoltaic panels with smart diodes and self-adapting electronics minimise loss of energy caused by imperfect light conditions or a single malfunctioning cell. If the need arises and the sun is simply not enough, the car can be plugged into a regular socket and charged in the same manner as conventional electric cars.

 

(Source: E&T Magazine)

Scientists haven’t yet found a way to mend a broken heart, but they’re edging closer to manipulating memory and downloading instructions from a computer right into a brain.

 

Researchers from the Riken-M.I.T. Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took us closer to this science-fiction world of brain tweaking last week when they said they were able to create a false memory in a mouse.

 

The scientists reported in the journal Science that they caused mice to remember receiving an electrical shock in one location, when in reality they were zapped in a completely different place. The researchers weren’t able to create entirely new thoughts, but they applied good or bad feelings to memories that already existed.

 

“It wasn’t so much writing a memory from scratch, it was basically connecting two different types of memories. We took a neutral memory, and we artificially updated that to make it a negative memory,” said Steve Ramirez, one of the M.I.T. neuroscientists on the project.

 

It may sound insignificant and perhaps not a nice way to treat mice, but it is not a dramatic leap to imagine that one day this research could lead to computer-manipulation of the mind for things like the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, Ramirez said.

 

Technologists are already working on brain-computer interfaces, which will allow us to interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. And there are already gadgets that read our thoughts and allow us to do things like dodge virtual objects in a computer game or turn switches on and off with a thought.

 

But the scientists who are working on memory manipulation are the ones who seem to be pushing the boundaries of what we believe is possible. Sure, it sounds like movie fantasy right now, but don’t laugh off the imagination of Hollywood screenwriters; sometimes the movies can be a great predictor of things to come.

 

In the movie, “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” a character played by Jim Carrey uses a service that erases memories to wipe his brain of his former girlfriend, played by Kate Winslet.

 

But it seems the movie’s screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman, was selling science short.

 

The “one thing that the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” gets wrong, is that they are erasing an entire memory,” said Ramirez of M.I.T. “I think we can do better, while keeping the image of Kate Winslet, we can get rid of the sad part of that memory.”

 

Hollywood and science-fiction writers, of course, have had fun with memory manipulation over the years.

 

In the film “Total Recall,” which is based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, a character played by Arnold Schwarzenegger receives a memory implant of a fake vacation to Mars. In “The Matrix,” characters can download new skills like languages or fighting techniques to their mind, much like downloading a file to a computer.

 

Far-fetched? Perhaps, and we’re not yet fighting our robot overlords as the humans were in “The Matrix,” but researchers really are exploring ways to upload new information to the brain.

 

In 2011, scientists working in collaboration with Boston University and A.T.R. Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, published a paper on a process called Decoded Neurofeedback, or “DecNef,” which sends signals to the brain through a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, or FMRI that can alter a person’s brain activity pattern. In time, these scientists believe they could teach people how to play a musical instrument while they sleep, learn a new language or master a sport, all by “uploading” information to the brain.

 

Writing to the brain could allow us to interact with our computers, or other human beings, just by thinking about it.

 

In February, Dr. Miguel A. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University successfully connected the brains of two rats over the Internet, allowing them to communicate with their minds so when one rat pressed a lever, the other one did the same. The rats were in different locations, one at Duke University, in North Carolina, and another in a laboratory in Natal, Brazil.

 

(Source: The New York Times)

 

Forrester recently issued a report titled “Connected Cars — Prepare for the Next Computing Environment,” which explores this sector and provides a 10-year outlook. Widespread connectivity, “abundant” sensors in smartphones, powerful analytics in the cloud, and continued technological innovation are transforming the automobile industry.

 

“Persistent broadband Internet connectivity has transformed many industries, primarily via smartphones and applications but also by embedding network connections into devices and environments,” said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin. “Now broadband mobile connectivity is about to become the default in vehicles, adding a new computing environment beyond office, home, and on-the-go.”

 

Golvin broke down connected car applications into four types — infotainment/media, advanced telematics, vehicle-to-X communications, and autonomous driving capabilities. 

 

Anyone developing products in these areas has to keep cars’ unique circumstances in mind. Cars often have multiple people in them and thus “in-vehicle computing must accommodate both the driver and the passengers.” 

 

Interaction model

 

Drivers also need to focus on the road and are interacting with more than one system. This means the “interaction model must enable user control and deliver vital information while minimizing driver distraction.” Furthermore, cars tend to be moving — they speed up, they slow down, they stop, and applications built for cars should respond accordingly.

 

Americans spend more than a hundred hours a year commuting (although this number is going down). These hours spent driving and stuck in traffic can get really boring, and consumers want access to music, news, communication tools, and games to make the time less dull. 

 

There are also significant opportunities to promote safety and security by creating more fluid navigational tools, sending alerts when something needs maintenance, and calling for help when necessary. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication technology can also support safer roads by making cars and their drivers more aware of their surroundings and potential risks. Further down the road (ha) are self-driving cars, which Google is famously working on along with DARPA. This technology has the power to transform America’s highways for the better by reducing accident rates and cutting down on traffic jams.

 

Consumers now expect a “smartphone-like experience in the car,” Golvin said. They are used to rapid cycles of innovation, and they have a greater range of transportation alternatives through companies like Zipcar and Getaround. 

 

Studies have shown that people are now driving less and buying fewer cars, and car makers, which are already facing significant challenges, need to respond accordingly if they want to remain competitive. 

 

According to Golvin, the greatest potential to create new revenue is with data brokerage and analysis and the ability to turn data collected by vehicles into actionable information.

 

Creating car experience

 

Creating a positive connected car experience requires input and cooperation from a number of players, and partnerships are a key way to achieve that. 

 

IBM and Sprint recently announced a partnership to enhance Sprint’s connected car platform with new data management capabilities, Intel is collaborating with Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, and BMW and has a $100 million connected car fund, and AT&T is partnering with GM’s OnStar, to name a few. Application developers will also need to get involved, which may be a challenge.

 

“OEMs recognize that, when it comes to new in-vehicle experiences, their own internal developments will not deliver the necessary pace of innovation,” Golvin said. “They will need to entice smartphone and tablet app developers to embrace the connected car opportunity. But despite the obvious long-term potential, developers are unlikely to prioritize in-vehicle apps because other opportunities will dwarf those offered by connected cars, platforms will remain highly fragmented, and the learning curve will be steep and bumpy.”

 

There are also regulatory agencies and insurance companies to think of.

 

Research firm SBD predicts that the global connected car market will swell to nearly $53 billion in 2018. This is still a nascent sector and there are so many things that need to be figured out. 

 

Golvin predicts that in the next 10 years, infotainment and media applications will remain dominated by smartphones, telematics will become more predictive and personalized, vehicle-to-X communications will expand to all the car’s surroundings, and autonomous vehicles will clear final regulatory hurdles and prepare to enter the market. He also said that connected cars will “change the auto industry’s economics” and that most of the large auto manufacturers won’t be able to make the “visionary leap” necessary to make this transition.

 

(Source: VentureBeat)

 

Areas occupied by marine species including fish, corals and plankton are moving by an average of 72 kilometers (45 miles) a decade, typically toward the poles, the study by researchers at 17 institutions in 8 countries said on August 4. That’s more than 10 times the 6.1 kilometer rate that land creatures are shifting. 

 

Marine environments face a range of changes brought on by the rising carbon emissions that scientists blame for global warming. 

 

Arctic sea ice is melting at record rates, while the carbon dissolved in the oceans is causing acidity to rise, harming corals and shellfish. 

 

The latest analysis will have implications for fisheries, an author of the paper said. 

 

The fish and their prey

 

“If the food a fish is eating is moving at a different pace, then the fish and their prey aren’t arriving at the same point at the same time,” Pippa Moore, a lecturer in aquatic biology at Aberystwyth University in Wales said in a telephone interview. 

 

“That has implications for the abundance of species and it will undoubtedly affect our food supplies and the species we’re used to seeing at our shores.” 

 

The researchers compiled data from 208 prior studies that examined 857 species. They found species of phytoplankton are shifting their ranges at almost 470 kilometers a decade and bony fish are moving at 278 kilometers every 10 years. 

 

Less mobile species such as corals are moving more slowly, Moore said. The study included seabirds, seals and polar bears in the assessment as they live in a marine environment and feed mostly on sea life. 

 

Researchers also uncovered shifts in seasonal behavior, or phenology, such as breeding, egg-laying and migration. 

 

Marine life

 

Marine life is displaying behavior typical of both spring and summer about 4.4 days earlier a decade. That compares with estimates of 2.3 to 2.8 days for land-based creatures, the researchers said. 

 

“This is the first comprehensive documentation of what is happening in our marine systems in relation to climate change,” Camille Parmesan, a co-author of the report and professor of oceans at Plymouth University in southwestern England, said in an e-mailed statement. 

 

The “changes that are occurring on land are being matched by the oceans. And far from being a buffer and displaying more minor changes, what we’re seeing is a far stronger response from the oceans.” 

 

(Source: Bloomberg)

 

The new bikes combine Indian’s iconic styling with modern technology features like a new Thunderstroke 111 engine, keyless ignition, electronic throttle, Bluetooth smartphone connectivity and a windshield that powers up or down.

 

The ambitious rollout by parent Polaris Industries, the $3.2 billion-a-year maker of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles, comes after a series of false starts by previous owners in the 60 years since Indian went bankrupt.

 

One big difference is the price: Polaris repositioned the brand to go head-to-head with Harley by cutting thousands of dollars off the sticker of each of its new models.

 

The new lineup includes the Indian Chief Classic, starting at $18,999; the Indian Chief Vintage, at $20,999, and the Indian Chieftan, at $22,999. Until now, Indian bikes were priced as high was $37,000 but suffered from marginal quality. They will arrive in dealerships in September.

 

The new Indian Chief Classic is a pure, powerful cruiser featuring iconic styling like valanced fenders, leather saddle, classic tank-mounted instrumentation, tear-drop fuel tank design, and sculpted and lighted front fender war bonnet, along with bells and whistles like keyless ignition, antilock brakes, cruise control, throttle-by-wire and dual exhaust.

 

The Indian Chief Vintage offers soft-sided leather bags, leather fringe, chrome fender tips, vintage chrome badging on the front fender and a quick-release windshield for easy installation or removal.

 

The Indian Chieftain is the first Indian to offer a molded front end, or fairing, with integrated driving lights, and a power windshield. Standard features include hard saddlebags featuring remote locks and quick-release anchors, a high-output audio system featuring integrated Bluetooth smartphone connectivity, and a tire pressure monitoring system.

 

“Indian always has been thought of as a classic cruiser,” said Steve Menneto, Polaris’ vice president of motorcycles. “What we’ve been saying from day one is we are going to be true to Indian’s roots. They were very innovative and progressive back in the day.” Referring to the Chieftain, he said, “This bike exemplifies how we are going to go in new directions. It shows where we’ve been and where we’re going.”

 

“It’s been a grueling, exciting and very expensive 27 months,” said Polaris chief executive Scott Wine. The company spent nearly $100 m to develop the bikes, he said.

 

“When we acquired Indian Motorcycle two and a half years ago we set out to capture the heart, soul and legendary heritage of this iconic American brand and then infuse it with unparalleled design, engineering and state-of-the-art technology,” said Wine. “On Saturday night we revealed three stunning new Indian Chief models that represent the results of our journey and the future of this brand. It was a triumphant day for all of us.

 

The Sturgis motorcycle rally was a fitting location for the unveiling since the event, which typically draws 400,000 bikers a year, was founded in 1938 by a local Indian dealer, Clarence “Pappy” Hoel. “We wanted to connect to our heritage,” said Menneto.

 

The company is adding quickly adding dealerships, and expects to have 125-140 North American and 70 international dealers by year end. Demo rides will be available starting later this month.

 

(Source: Forbes)

 

Now, a new study points to an armada of icebergs or meltwater from Greenland as a possible cause for the sudden climate change called the Younger Dryas, or the Big Freeze. 

 

The findings were published online July 10 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

 

Starting roughly 12,900 years ago, the Big Freeze halted the Northern Hemisphere's transition from an Ice Age to today's relatively warm, interglacial period. 

 

In just a decade, glacial cold returned to the northern latitudes. The tropics shifted more slowly, with changes in monsoon intensity and the amount of rainfall they received. Only Antarctica went untouched.

 

In the most widely accepted model, researchers have suggested massive glacial floods from North America shut down warm ocean currents in the North Atlantic, leading to the climate cooling. 

 

Just before the Younger Dryas, the continent's Laurentide Ice Sheet was melting, and freshwater floods could have poured into the Atlantic or Arctic oceans through the St. Lawrence or Mackenzie rivers, respectively. However, there is ongoing debate about the size and timing of the floods.

 

A sediment core from the northern Labrador Sea near Greenland contains evidence of icebergs produced Greenland's ice sheet was also presumably melting 13,000 years ago, but it has rarely been named as a prime suspect in the Younger Dryas cooling. 

 

Geological clues not found

 

Widespread geological clues for a big Greenland ice breakup hadn't been found. 

 

But in seafloor sediments in the Labrador Sea, near Greenland's southern tip, scientists from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland think they've found their smoking gun. 

 

There, a ship pulled up cores of mud with rock fragments carried by icebergs from Greenland and dropped into the ocean as the ice melted. Some of the rubble is distinctly older, by about 1 billion years, than rock rafted into the Labrador Sea by North American icebergs.

 

Combined with other geochemical evidence from the mud cores (cylinders of sediment drilled out of the seafloor), the findings suggest a sudden pulse of Greenland meltwater hit the Labrador Sea about 13,000 years ago, just before the Younger Dryas cooling started.

 

"It wasn't as giant as the Laurentide Ice Sheet, but these more minor ice sheets can also contribute to ocean-climate interactions," said Paul Knutz, lead study author and a marine geologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. 

 

Through either a crack-up that released an iceberg flotilla, or a freshwater flood, the Greenland Ice Sheet lowered salinity in the Labrador Sea so much that it affected heat transport in the North Atlantic, according to oceanographic models.

 

Ice topped Greenland can be seen in this cloud-free satellite image.Though the study still can't rule out the Laurentide Ice Sheet as the cause of the Younger Dryas cooling, the evidence points to Greenland as a "very likely culprit," Knutz told LiveScience.

 

Although the link between the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and climate change during the Younger Dryas is still not conclusively established, the evidence seems to be stacking up in favor of a connection, said Eelco Rohling, a paleoclimatologist at the Australian National University in Canberra who wasn't involved in the study. The "timing relationship seems OK, but coincidence does not imply causality," he told LiveScience.

 

Understanding how Greenland melting changed ocean circulation and climate in the past can help predict the ice sheet's future role in climate change, the researchers said. "This does have implications for the future," Knutz said.

 

Another big melt from Greenland's shrinking ice sheet could shift the North Atlantic's circulation.

 

"If it turns out that the Greenland Ice Sheet was a major player — not just in this last climate flick, the Younger Dryas, but in the rapid, millennial-scale climate swings through the last glacial period — then I think we need to be more concerned about potential meltwater fluxes from this region," Knutz said.

 

(Source: Live Science)

 

Using a combination of a large mirror, a wide field of view, and sharp imaging, astronomers have taken a giant step forward into a new era of observational astronomy, which will contribute to existing knowledge about the nature of dark energy and matter.

 

At 2.5 million light years from Earth, M31, more commonly known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is the spiral galaxy nearest to the Milky Way. 

 

Since 964 A.D. it has captured the attention of watchers of the night sky. Astronomers find it particularly interesting due to its similarity to the Milky Way Galaxy, believing it can provide valuable information about our own galaxy’s formation. 

 

Because the galactic center is visible, astronomers can investigate how star formation varies with distance from this midpoint.

 

One of the most significant details of the HSC image is the consistently high resolution quality of objects throughout the frame. Despite a field of view seven times larger than that of its predecessor, the Subaru Prime Focus Camera (Suprime-Cam), there is no degradation of the image at the edges.

 

Tangible evidence

 

The M31 image provides tangible evidence of features that HSC’s developers predicted as early as 2002. At that time, astronomers at Subaru Telescope were trying to anticipate future demands of cosmology research that could not be handled by existing technology. This foresight led to the establishment of the HSC Project in 2008, which acted as a catalyst for international collaboration among several major research partners.

 

Director of the HSC Project, Dr. Satoshi Miyazaki, was deeply satisfied with HSC’s performance, believing it will be crucial to realizing the scientific objective of completing a “cosmic census.” The sharp resolution demonstrates the instrument’s capability of capturing weak lensing, which will be central to surveying the parameters and properties of dark matter and dark energy, as well investigate reasons for the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

 

A large-scale survey will include detailed measurement of hundreds of millions of galaxy shapes, as well as an assessment into the effects of gravitational lensing. 

 

This data will allow researchers to map the distribution of dark matter and constrain the nature of dark energy, while searching for “baby galaxies” born in the early Universe.

 

Astronomers have long dreamed of having the ability to capture images of billions of galaxies across the sky. As the HSC continues along a successful path of testing its capabilities, that dream is quickly becoming a reality.

 

(Source: Science Recorder)

 

The basic handset has a 4.7-inch, 1280-by-720 pixel AMOLED screen, 2GB of RAM, 802.11a/g/b/n/ac Wi-Fi, no removable storage, and has a 10MP camera on the back and a 2MP front-facer. It runs Android 4.3, the latest build Google released last week for the Nexus 7 fondleslab launch and the company says the 2200 mAh battery is good for 24 hours of use between charges.

 

The phone's X8 chip comes with discrete cores for voice commands and gesture controls, and executives at the launch event in New York demonstrated how a spoken "OK Google" request allows hands-free navigation and search.

 

The Moto X uses sensors to constantly be aware of ambient light conditions and the orientation of the device. If you need the camera in a hurry, flick the phone over twice and the camera function automatically starts up and you can take a picture just by pressing the display.

 

These sensors are coupled with Google Now, so that the device can give local information and manage schedules to suit the user. It will also display key alerts such as messages and missed calls on the lock screen whenever the phone is turned on.

 

But voice commands and some snazzy sensor work isn't the only trick up Motorola's sleeve; it is touting the phone's 2,000 personalization options from Motorola's Moto Maker factory in Fort Worth, Texas, which gives the phone its "assembled in America" tag.

 

The front of the device comes in black or white, and there are 18 colors to pick for the back of the phone; an inscription can be added as well. The phone's earpieces can be picked in the same color range, as can the trim around the camera and display. Customized phones can be assembled and delivered in four days or less, Motorola promised.

 

All four major networks – Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile – will be selling the Moto X for $199 for the 16GB version and $249 for the 32GB model. Since you've got no removable storage, El Reg recommends the larger of the two

 

(Source: The Register)