Extra Credit: Our pick of stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each Tuesday from the editors of JSTOR Daily.
Coding and gender (Slate)
by Valerie Woolard
A new study finds that women’s contributions to open-source software are more likely than men’s to be approved—but only if there’s no way to tell that the contributor is a woman. That’s just one of many things research tells us about the intersections of gender and coding.
Twitter vs. ISIS (The Atlantic)
by Kaveh Waddell
If Twitter pulls down an ISIS-affiliated account, another one will just spring back up to do the same job, right? A new study finds this doesn’t seem to be the case. Twitter’s suspensions of accounts that are part of the Islamic State’s propaganda machine seem to reduce its effectiveness.
Did evolution start before biology? (Quanta Magazine)
by Emily Singer
The conventional explanation for the start of life begins with the biological reproduction of RNA. But new research argues that the building blocks of life as we know it may have emerged from complicated chemical processes well before biology took hold.
What it would take to let information be free (Hippo Reads)
By Cardiff University
More open access to researchers’ work can help science move forward, and a new paper notes that modern technologies make sharing information easier than ever. The trouble is, existing structures in academia incentivize secrecy. But peer reviewers may hold the key to changing those incentives.
It’s been a crazily warm winter for the Arctic (The Washington Post)
by Chris Mooney
Think this winter has been unusually warm? This is nothing compared with what’s been happening in the Arctic. Researchers say “absurdly warm” weather in the northernmost parts of the planet go beyond the previously known Arctic amplification of global warming.
Have you seen a story online that does a good job of bridging the gap between the news and scholarship? Or something that seems particularly well-researched? Let us know and we may include it in next week’s roundup. Email us at jstordaily_submissions (at) jstor (dot) org.
