A rare form of black bear--that is actually white--faces threats to its survival in its British Columbia habitat

FROM THE DOCK of British Columbia's Hartley Bay, guide Marvin Robinson looks across the waters of the Douglass Channel to Gribbell Island. The 96-square-mile island--thickly forested in hemlock, cedar and fir--is home to the world's highest concentration of the rare "spirit bear"--a pale color variant of the American black bear. Long revered by the First Nations of British Columbia, scientists dubbed it the Kermode bear in 1905 after one of the first scientists to study the species, Francis Kermode. ... READ MORE at NATIONAL WILDLIFE.

Health magazine recently asked me to take an in-depth look at the increasing number of products being sold with a "probiotic" claim. As readers of Good Germs, Bad Germs know, the benefits of probiotics, or beneficial bacteria, are highly strain specific. That is, the so-called "good" bacteria in cultured foods and supplements vary widely in their effects--even between two strains, or "subspecies," of a given bug such as the familiar Lactobacillus acidophilus.

Research into several dozen products and probiotic strains produced a "best bets" list of those backed by bona fide science including clinical trials showing tangible benefits in people (not just lab animals). 

The story and a chart of products and their known benefits are in this month's issue. 

You may have seen or heard the recent headlines, along the lines of "Women's Hands 'Germier' than Men's." The report behind the rather misleading news flash is more interesting.

University of Colorado professor Noah Fierer studies the ecology of bacteria, fungi, and related microbes in natural systems such as soil, water, and the atmosphere. Turning his survey techniques to the human body, he looked at the diversity of bacteria on the hands of 51 students--all healthy except for the interesting twist that they'd all just finished their final exams. (Sweatier palms than usual, perhaps?)

Fierer and his colleagues used a gene-sequencing technique to count the number of different types of bacteria on each subject's hands. They tallied an impressive 4,742 types.

The quirky news headlines jumped out of the unexpected finding that the hands of female students harbored a greater diversity (but not necessarily more germs, per se) than did the guys'. 

Just as interesting, perhaps, was the finding that while everyone seemed to share a core group of common skin bacteria, these common species made up just 13 percent of the total diversity. In fact, over 80 percent of the microbial species found on a person's left hand were different from those found on the right.

All this seems to suggest that most of the bacteria on our hands are fleeting transients. We pick them up as we touch objects, surfaces, and other body parts.

That said, the researchers found that hand washing--while a good idea when you're around others who might be ill--did little to change the diversity of the a palm's rainforest-rich ecosystem.

Hre's the study, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with more interesting stuff at Fierer's website at the University of Colorado.