I think there's just a word gap. When sending old school paper mail you can say all of the following;

there's a lot of mail today

has the mail arrived

mail me the details

--BUT you would typically not say

i sent two mails

--INSTEAD you'd likely say

i sent two letters

When we replace mail with e-mail we have also replaced letter with e-mail. So when I say:

i sent two e-mails

Anyone trying to reverse engineer the obvious rule would see that as synonymous with;

i sent two mails

Thus because there's not a 1-to-1 relationship between the 'old' and the 'new' many who are applying the old grammar will not accept the new method, which when you fill in the gaps (ie with e-mail=letter) is perfectly fine

Yes, because language has evolved (often in parallel) and is memetic. The whole thing is one big game of telephone. I believe this is why Stephen Wolfram is pushing to create a new form of language similar to maths that can be used to universally communicate anything. Because everything else is subject to history and context.

>The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.

~Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

what is 'this' referring to?

Yes, given the large number of enterprises whose official policies are gender biased.

As the article says, it would be ideal for using instead of a battery, to avoid having to replace the battery. I'm assuming this doesn't scale up. If it's so responsive it can't be very hardy.

I think they barely touch on it because it's not important. You don't work in cell biology without 'sometimes... cancer!' being the norm.

This does not change the findings, or their importance. We already knew cancer happens.