There's no way of stating this definetely. Some people have a hard time seeing small fonts, like this on the other hand some people find fonts like this hard to read. This is based strictly upon the size of the font.
Most people find a font size of 11 points easy to read from a distance of about 1 1/2 - 2 feet (45 - 60 cm).
Other aspects that need to be taken into consideration, are font style, foreground colouring, and background colouring.
I definitely think they are. It's easier to read as all the characters are the same size, so in effect if you go down the scientific route, your eyes have to do less work than looking at a scribbly all over the place font
It all ends up with what-you-are-comfortable-with.
Exactly. Try them and see what you prefer. Everyone will have different preferences for this and other "what's better" questions. The best thing to do is to just try them and find one that you like.
I like Microsoft Sans Serif (bold-11pt) for some channels, again a non-fixed width font. I set my fonts on a per channel basis though so i still have fixedsys-9 as default.