When chemical engineer Michael Dickey talks about his research on liquid metals, he knows what to expect. "People usually say mercury or the Terminator," he says, alluding to the shape-shifting killer robot from the 1992 movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Even many researchers, he says, aren't familiar with the unique properties and potential uses of these unusual materials, which conduct heat and electricity like any other metal yet are liquids near room temperature.That unfamiliarity is changing. Over the last few years, he says, liquid metals have undergone a renaissance among researchers-thanks, in part, to growing interest in wearable devices and soft robotics. These technologies demand new kinds of electronics that bend and stretch.Liquid metals also hold enormous potential as routes to new materials and catalysts, which can kick-start useful chemical reactions for many industries and applications. The metals could even help trap and convert carbon dioxide, offering another technology to combat climate change. Less than a decade ago, only a handful of groups around the world were working with liquid metals, notes Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, a chemical engineer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. "Now it's exploding."A growing number of research groups are working with liquid metals, hoping to exploit their potential to create new materials, new catalysts, and possibly new ways to trap carbon dioxide. Republished with permission of Royal Society of Chemistry, from ref. 14; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

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He was studying migraine, and during this particular talk about the trigeminovascular system-the network of nerves linked to blood vessels in the head-something clicked. This pathway, he realized, could be a way to understand migraine. He introduced himself to the speaker, a physician at the local university hospital named Lars Edvinsson. Over coffee, the two discussed potential biomarkers for migraine in the trigeminovascular system-including a molecule called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) that had been discovered a few years previously. CGRP is a neuropeptide, which neurons use to communicate, and Edvinsson Monoclonal antibodies (red shapes) against the calcitonin gene-related peptide receptor (blue) have revolutionized migraine treatment.