Probably little-known for a reason.

Sure, eventually we'd like to know the nature of the life we find... whether or not they have cars, jetpacks, or nuclear weapons to destroy all of humankind. I think it's ok to start with the small stuff. There's no reason to start building a laser-based chupacabra containment machine until we definitively determine they exist, don't you think?

The notion that chiral molecules polarize light is not the contribution of this research. Anyone that has taken an introductory organic chemistry course will know this property of chiral molecules to be true. Also, those involved with "origins of life" research are certainly aware that looking for this type of light might be our best bet at discovering alien life. The idea is not novel. The approach is. The paper they reference is titled: "Detection of circular polarization in light scattered from photosynthetic microbes" Which focuses on the approach to detection, not the novelty of what the detection might implicate.

More experience with getting pregnant and having a baby, sure. A lot of this could potentially translate to making the woman a better pediatrician.

If all women that wanted to work part-time as a physician were going into pediatrics, then we'd be all set. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

It's a question of experience. Good doctors are those with experience. The decisions good doctors make are often things that aren't obtained by reading a textbook. They spend time with patients, large numbers of them, and get their own intuition of the best way to treat illness. Simply put, women that are taking twice as long to finish a residency (today it is not uncommon for two women to fill a single residency slot, if both of them are only interested in working part-time), and then only practicing part-time once the residency is completed, leaves them with less time with patients and less overall experience.

I'll take the doctor with the most experience.

Where this trend really starts getting scary is in the field of medicine. While medical schools are trying desperately to accept increasing numbers of women (often more than 50% to compensate for those that don't continue on to practice) many of the women that do finish choose to raise a family during their time of residency (or soon after). This leaves women with less actual medical experience, and generally lowers the overall quality of care.

Java and Flash are really the only contenders that are likely to be able to be compiled directly from the browser.

This project allows Java compilation from the browser:

http://opencode.media.mit.edu/

To me, this is far more interesting than using the browser as a text editor.