Science News Roundup: White House directs NASA to create time standard for the moon; Wide swath of US will get buggy as two cicada broods intrude and more

Researchers identified rare variants of a gene involved in controlling the shape of cells and found them to be 2.7 times more common in left-handed people.

Following is a summary of current science news briefs.

Wide swath of US will get buggy as two cicada broods intrude

Cicadas, the noisy but rather tame insects that spend most of their lives underground, are poised to put on quite a show starting this month in a wide swath of the United States. Two sizable adjacent broods of periodical cicadas - the kind that spend a specific number of years underground as nymphs before popping up together for a brief bacchanalia of singing and mating - are set to emerge simultaneously, one concentrated in Midwestern states and the other in the South and Midwest.

White House directs NASA to create time standard for the moon

The White House on Tuesday directed NASA to establish a unified standard of time for the moon and other celestial bodies, as the United States aims to set international norms in space amid a growing lunar race among nations and private companies. The head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), according to a memo seen by Reuters, instructed the space agency to work with other parts of the U.S. government to devise a plan by the end of 2026 for setting what it called a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC).

Gene involved in cell shape offers clues on left-handedness

What do Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Paul McCartney and Justin Bieber have in common with Jimi Hendrix, Judy Garland and David Bowie? They are all left-handed, a trait shared by roughly 10% of people. But why are some people left-handed while most are righties? That is an area of active research, and a new study sheds light on a genetic component of left-handedness in some people. Researchers identified rare variants of a gene involved in controlling the shape of cells and found them to be 2.7 times more common in left-handed people.

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