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polyurethane

Self-assembling foam chair expands like popcorn

This is a new kind of flat-pack furniture. There are no Allen keys, no screws, no scratching your head over Ikea-style instructions. Instead, Noumenon designer Carl de Smet's Memories of the Future furniture just needs a little loving warmth.

It's made from shape memory polyurethane (SMP), a material invented by Mitsubishi Heavy Industry that expands when heated. This allows de Smet to manufacture the chair and squash it down to 5 percent of its size for packing and shipping. When the owner gets it home, it blows up like a balloon with the application of a little heat. … Read more

Apple updates iPad 2 Smart Cover lineup with dark gray option

Apple has quietly tweaked its iPad 2 Smart Cover color offerings. Gone is the candy-colored orange polyurethane Smart Cover, replaced by a sleeker, infinitely more subtle dark gray option.

Also adjusted are the original polyurethane colors of blue, green, pink, and light gray, each being made "more vibrant" according to sources reporting to MacRumors. As for the leather iPad 2 Smart Covers, "Apple has slightly tweaked the color on the navy version to make it 'more navy' than the original version," according to the source.

Perhaps the best tweak, though, is that Apple has now color-matched … Read more

2011 Grand Jeep Cherokee swaps soy foam for recycled foam

Chrysler has found a way to make use of 180,000 pounds of polyurethane foam that would otherwise end up in a landfill. And if you find yourself in a 2011 Grand Jeep Cherokee, you'll be sitting on some of it.

The seats and headrests found in the new 2011 Grand Jeep Cherokees are partly composed of new recycled foam. Starting a green-versus-greener debate, the recycled foam comprises by weight 5 percent of the seat and 10 percent of the headrest, and replaces the previously used amount of soy foam. To put it in perspective, 180,000 pounds of … Read more