I'm sitting in my office in London (looking at a grey drizzle outside—pretty standard fare really!) wondering where the year has gone. 2012 has been quite a year in many ways for gold technology. We've seen two of the biggest gold-focused conferences take place: (1) The Gordon Research Conference Noble Metal Nanoparticle meeting in Massachusetts in June, which was convened by Dr. Michael Natan of Cabot Corporation and (2) GOLD2012, which was held in Tokyo and chaired by Professor Masatake Haruta of Tokyo Metropolitan University. Both of these meetings were excellent and highlight the depth of research in the field at the moment. The Noble Metal Nanoparticle meeting was heavily oversubscribed with researchers requesting speaking and poster slots, and GOLD2012 brought together almost 400 people from countries around the world, a record level of attendance. Both meetings will be held again in 2014 and 2015, respectively, which I know many of you will be delighted to hear.

Nanotechnology has continued to drive the volume of gold research throughout 2012. Indeed, this issue of Gold Bulletin is full of high-quality nanotechnology-focused articles. One paper which jumps out comes from Professor Qun Huo's team at the University of Central Florida who discusses how dynamic light scattering (DLS) can give us an improved insight into the potential interactions between gold nanoparticle materials and biomolecules in vivo and in vitro. Professor Huo has worked in this field for many years and is now busy commercialising this gold nanoparticle-based DLS technology through a small start up company called Nanodiscovery LLC in addition to her duties as a faculty professor. I follow her progress with some excitement and believe she is showing just how high-quality nanotechnology research can be transformed into a commercial venture to everyone's benefit. The other articles in this issue illustrate just how diverse the field of gold nanotechnology is. We have a theoretical paper investigating plasmon couplings in nanoshells, a preparative article focusing on an extension of the classic Turkevich–Frens nanoparticle synthesis method, a description of a novel protease assay method and the use of supported NiO/Au catalysts for selective hydrogenation. In support, we have the ‘hot off the press’ literature and patent highlights, along with a book and conference review.

I hope you enjoy this final issue of 2012. As always, thank you to you all for your ongoing support of Gold Bulletin. If you still haven't signed up for the journal alerts, please do so here (http://www.springer.com/materials/special+types/journal/13404). You can also submit your manuscripts for peer review here using Springer's simple and user-friendly portal editorial manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/gold/).