Swiss furnituremaker Vitra, introduces Dutch designer Hella Jongerius’ Polder, a couch that mimics the Netherlands’ flat landscapes, upholstered in six fabrics. Windmills not included.

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Animal Prints

It started on the runway several seasons ago when Miuccia Prada sent out some savage leopard-print cloth coats complete with fur trim. Almost every other designer has since tapped into this favorite classic—whether that means leopard-print clutches à la Roger Vivier or a full-on animal-print platform…

Neuromarketing, coined by a marketing professor at Erasmus University, is the use of neuroscience to better understand how our brain reacts to advertising, brands and products.

On a recent Wednesday night, Eleanor Phipp spent and hour watching commercial television. Nothing unusual about that–except that Phipp, 30, was in a dark room at a South London medical center, lying inside a loudly whirring functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner that mapped her brain as video…

By 2010 New Orleans will (probably) be flooded only once every 100 years. The NL. has a system designed to protect populated areas against anything but a 1-in-10,000-years flood.

Every July the country’s leading disaster scientists and emergency planners gather in Boulder, Colo., for an invitation-only workshop. Picture 440 people obsessed with the tragic and the safe, people who get excited about earthquake “shake maps” and righteous about flood insurance. It’s a spirited but wonky crowd that is…

Dutch scientists report that populations of a migratory species called the pied flycatcher have plummeted an astonishing 90% over the past two decades because of climate change.

Even after an unusually mild winter, the return of spring to North America feels like a blessing. Parents are dragging their toddlers to the park. Students are dusting off their Frisbees. And bird watchers, armed with binoculars and guidebooks, are heading out to search for their favorite species.

But…

“Don’t think of me as a 14-year-old, since all these troubles have made me older,” said Anne Frank, in a 1944 letter to her father that was released last week.

Our answer to those who are angry about Iran obtaining the full nuclear cycle is one phrase. We say: Be angry, and die of this anger.”

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, President of Iran, following his announcement that Iran had successfully enriched uranium

“From an Islamic point of view, we have to be…

Jaap Goudsmit, chief scientific officer for Netherlands-based Crucell, which supplies cell-culture technology, expects to test the first cell-based avian-flu vaccine as early as next spring.

More than half of the $7.1 billion that President Bush wants to spend preparing for a flu pandemic is dedicated to finding better ways to make antiviral drugs and vaccines, an investment that scientists say is long overdue. Flu vaccines were being grown in chicken eggs more than 50 years…