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A fuel cell that promises to be both cheaper and more efficient than existing designs has been developed by Paul Kenis of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In a typical fuel cell, one chamber contains fuel that reacts across a porous membrane with oxygen in a second chamber, liberating electrons that provide electrical power. Kenis’s system does away with the membrane by exploiting a phenomenon known as “laminar flow”, where tiny streams of liquid behave so viscously they do not mix when squeezed past one another. That not only simplifies the cell’s design, but might lead to efficiency increases…