Materials with Memory

Imagine a world of shape-shifters. A surgeon inserts a small lump of plastic into an anesthetized patient and, like magic, it expands into a life-saving mesh tube that keeps a formerly clogged artery open. Or maybe the shape-shifter starts as a microscopic metal claw with talons ready to pounce. Once the claw is in a patient’s body, a doctor zaps it with electricity and the device clamps down, as though it had muscles of its own, and performs a biopsy.