With its unhurried expansion of the Cheval Blanc brand, LVMH is slowly but surely redefining the concept of a luxury hotel.

It is one of those quintessential Maldivian afternoons in which a single fluffy cloud sails across the sky like a slow-moving ship and the slender palm trees seem to stretch to the sun. My fantasy island—a football field–sized patch smothered by a mound of snow-white sand—is silent save for the whisper of a light breeze and the churning of the rising tide. I flatten myse…

The Can-Am Spyder’s oddball three-wheeled configuration polarized die-hard motorcyclists when it was launched in 2007. It was the brainchild of Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP)—the Canadian conglomerate responsible for the Ski-Doo snowmobile and the Sea-Doo personal watercraft—making the curious trike an appropriately disruptive force within the traditionalist motorcycling community.

For 2015, BRP has introduced the $19,500 Can-Am Spyder F3, which adds a performance-focused edge to the lineup. The Spy…

Sometimes, one of the most instructive exercises for those of us who review top-end sports and luxury automobiles is experiencing a marque’s more modest offerings. And the new Audi A3 Cabriolet and S3 Sedan speak volumes about how the German manufacturer treats its entry-level customers.

We recently took the all-new 2015 A3 Cabriolet 1.8T FWD S tronic (quite a mouthful) for a quick jaunt to Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., about 135 miles from Los Angeles. Equipped with a 1.8-lit…

The radical new Star yacht concept from the Italian firm Lobanov Design, conceived in collaboration with the British naval architecture firm BMT Nigel Gee, pushes the boundary of contemporary yacht design. The 435-foot superyacht features a minimalist, symmetrical design, with a white hull and superstructure marked by an intricate, snowflake-like pattern of irregularly shaped windows—an effect made even more striking when the yacht is lit up at night. The forward and aft sections slope gently and then steeply …

The third collaboration between BlackBerry and Porsche Design, the new P’9983 smartphone is a stylish upgrade of the mobile-device maker’s Q10 smartphone running the newest BlackBerry 10 operating system. Though its technical specifications remain largely unchanged (it does feature 64 gigabytes of storage compared to the Q10’s 16), the Porsche Design phone is built from premium materials—including a scratch-resistant sapphire camera lens, a forged-steel logo plate and case side, and a full QWERTY keyboard with…

At this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the Southern California performance-car manufacturer Saleen unveiled its first all-electric model, the Saleen Foursixteen. Known for building versions of U.S. muscle cars, such as the Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Camaro, from the chassis up, as well as its own supercar, the S7, Saleen has marked out an intriguing new direction with the introduction of an electric vehicle.

A radically restyled version of the Tesla Model S P85, the Foursixteen (starting from …

Celebrity chef–sponsored food festivals seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but Ultimo at the Venetian Las Vegas, from December 5 through 7, is no ordinary food festival. Hosting the event and preparing food throughout the weekend is not one but three brand-name chefs—Daniel Boulud, Emeril Lagasse, and Buddy Valastro—and optional accompaniments to the dining festivities are spa treatments at the Venetian’s Canyon Ranch SpaClub, exotic-car driving at the nearby Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and a shopping spree w…

Rats are very useful for studying human eating behavior. Both rats and humans are omnivores, and both use flavor conditioning — learning through taste and experience which foods are good to eat and which to avoid. So if a particular flavor is associated with a desirable outcome like feeling full, this makes it more palatable, whereas a stomach illness would make it unpalatable.

Rats also share with humans many of the neurobiological and hormonal mechanisms of flavor learning and appetite regulation. Al…

This is the final report in our four-part series on the cutting edge of research for treating and preventing breast cancer. Robert H. Vonderheide is a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and is the associate director of translational research at the Abramson Cancer Center there. He and Susan M. Domchek, MD, the Basser Professor in Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, have been working together as Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) scientific invest…

Beginning November 3, the German writing-instruments manufacturer Pelikan will offer this year’s auction collection, called the Unique Collection 2014, which comprises 17 one-of-a-kind maki-e pens. The follow-up to a similar sale in 2012, the auction will be conducted entirely online and will see a new pen come up for bids each weekday. Buyers will have one week from the start of bidding for each pen before the digital hammer falls.

All the pens for the sale are decorated using the traditional Japanese maki…