  Coherent structures emerge from the dynamics of many kinds of dissipative,
externally driven, nonlinear systems, and continue to provoke new questions
that challenge our physical and mathematical understanding. In one specific
sub-class of such problems, where a pattern-forming, or `Turing', instability
occurs, rapid progress has been made recently in our understanding of the
formation of localized states: patches of regular pattern surrounded by the
unpatterned homogeneous background state. This short review article surveys the
progress that has been made for localized states, proposes three areas of
application for these ideas that would take the theory in new directions and
ultimately be of substantial benefit to areas of applied science. Finally I
offer speculations for future work, based on localized states, that may help
researchers to understand coherent structures more generally.
