Once again, a whole slew of science stuff that mostly appeared on my radar towards the end of the month.

• As usual I like to start with what I think is the most important findings instead of what is spread virally the most. This one is huge if the experiment can be replicated and it concerns how multicellularity can evolve in a single-celled species. The scientists exposed green algae to predation and found that they had evolved novel multicellular structures within 750 generations. They also observed that these new traits helped protect the algae from the predator.
• Next is research claiming that a lack of sleep can lead to DNA damage. The sample size of the study is admittedly small but the claim is that they examined who had to work overtime shifts and found that they had more breaks in their DNA and less active DNA repair activity than those with more normal sleep patterns. It is theorized that this could raise cancer risk.
• Returning to the controversy-laden announcement of gene-edited twins in China last year, there’s been a new claim that by deleting the CCR5 gene to make the girls immune to HIV, the team also inadvertently improved their brains’ ability to recover from stroke and perhaps also increased their overall intelligence.
• Moving on from the life sciences, here’s a paper about how autonomous pricing algorithms, essentially AI agents assigned to determine prices to maximize revenue in a market can spontaneously engage in collusive pricing behavior without being specifically programmed to do so and without even being allowed to communicate with one another. This isn’t surprising but it does as the paper states pose a challenge for authorities trying to set competition policy.
• Last year there was a paper that tried to value Facebook by asking users how much they would have to be paid to voluntarily give it up. This new paper instead forced a group of people off of the social network and afterwards monitored their activity. It was found that many of them reduced their usage levels even after the deactivation period and some didn’t return to Facebook at all. The researchers make the argument that Facebook could be a net bad for society but the costs of individuals voluntarily giving it up are too high so there is case for forcing a reset.
• Finally the news that has been spread everywhere is this bit about zombie deer in North America. It’s caused by an infection that attacks the brain and spinal cord tissue and eventually causes death. But before then it apparently makes the animals more aggressive and affects their coordination, hence zombies. So far it doesn’t appear to pose any risk to humans.