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As a lifelong beardie, I am longing for these furry newcomers to shave If you are repelled by the inexplicably large number of young   men wearing big beards, the prediction by a pogonologist, or beard-scientist, from New South Wales will cheer you. We have reached “peak beard”, declares Dr Rob Brooks. From now on, beards will dwindle and fail, soon to be despised and shunned. Dr Brooks is an evolutionary biologist, wouldn’t you just know it? In his book, the popularity of beards is a matter of “negative frequency-dependent selection”. In other words, if a few men wear beards and are thought sexy, then others will rush in to imitate them. When everyone has one, there’s no advantage in growing facial foliage. I’m not sure we aren’t having the scientific beard pulled over our eyes here. Take the creature known as the bearded tamarin. The male displays a fine set of whiskers, and no doubt a lady tamarin goes for the Best in Show. But we shall never see a shaven tamari...

The bad: Only an iterative improvement Size too big for most hands There are used to be three really great phones on the market. But now Samsung ’s  Galaxy S5 , HTC’s One and  Apple ’s iPhone 5S are joined by Sony ’s Xperia Z2. It’s the phone the original Z1 should have been in the first place. In short, there’s now a great screen and a superb camera paired with the processing power it deserves, and a water-resistant design that is as robust as smartphones get. Same great design In many ways, the Z2 is not all that different from its predecessor. Its design is practically identical, and that for many means it remains the best looking Android phone on the market. The glass and aluminium construction may show up the smudges and scratches, but it’s almost on a par with the iPhone. Few really like the S5’s plastic, even if that device aims to be a gateway to wearable smartwatches and fitness bands as much as it is a phone. The new HTC One’s curving metal design is t...

A study by Harvard University and Project Viva suggests that children lose seven minutes of sleep for every hour of television that they watch Children lose seven minutes of sleep for every hour of television they watch a day, a study has warned. Researchers who followed more than 1,800 children aged six months to nearly eight-years-old found a "small but consistent association" between increased television viewing and shorter sleep duration. The study revealed that each hour of television viewing was associated with seven fewer minutes of sleep daily, with the effects appearing to be stronger in boys than in girls. And children under eight-years-old who have a television in their bedroom are also less likely to get the right amount of sleep, which is bad for their physical and mental well-being. Young children who had a television in their room lost an average of 30 minutes of sleep a night. “Our study supports a negative influence of TV viewing ...

Crowdfunding is being used to expand an app developed by a father to help his autistic son. Brain in Hand this week listed on the Crowdcube platform, where it hopes to raise £100,000 of the £750,000 it needs. It has already raised £375,000 from investors, who include Marek Gumienny. the 24 Haymarket director. It hopes to raise the remainder with the help of the investment group Clearlyso, which is dedicated to backing businesses that “create positive social change”. The app is used by four NHS trusts, including a specialist mental health trust, the Tavistock and Portman in London, and four schools. Brain in Hand has around 125 users, but the company hopes to expand this to 4,000. This week, it will make the app available to individuals, having previously licensed it only for organisations. David Fry, the chief executive of the four-year-old company, said although the hospitals using the app have reported cost savings of £300 to £800 a week for each patient t...

Saffron works a kind of magic in both sweet and savoury dishes Saffron was the crazy spice when I was a teenager. I didn’t have a clue what to do with it but felt it was seductively “out there”. I knew the lyrics “I’m just mad about Saffron” and I too wanted to be “mellow yellow”. There was nothing for it but a trip to the only health-food shop in Northern Ireland with my best friend. Sassafras was below Good Vibrations record shop in Belfast, but while our male peers were high on The Undertones, Audrey and I were getting our teenage kicks from otherworldly ingredients. We never cooked with the packets of saffron we bought but held on to them as if they were talismans. The first time I actually tasted saffron, in a creamy fish stew, I thought there was something wrong with the dish. The flavour of saffron has been described as mushroomy, hay-like, even smoky. In fact, it’s metallic with honey tones and a whiff of seashells. I find it a difficult flavour to recall, and I al...

In the woodlands near San Francisco, blogger Erin Gleeson has found her niche creating vegetarian bites to tempt the eye and the appetite I grew up in an apple orchard in Sonoma County, California, in the Eighties, next to a mini-commune and some goat farmers. As a family we were vegetarian, had no television and spent a lot of time outside or in the kitchen, where in summer we picked blackberries for pie and in autumn made everything imaginable with apples. After taking years of watercolour classes, I studied art at university and, upon graduation, told my family I was moving to New York to become a photographer. I had no job, little money and a short-term sublet flat in Manhattan, but what I thought would be a one-year adventure soon became eight as I discovered the New York food scene. I volunteered as a photographer for the James Beard Foundation, a non-profit organisation devoted to the culinary arts, and started shooting food for different publications and books, working ...