The outside front cover, provided by Christoph Fahrni and colleagues at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, US, illustrates their work on predicting the photophysical properties of 1,3,5-triarylpyrazoline fluorophores. Their approach should be well suited for designing and optimising the performance of cation-responsive fluorescent probes, they claim.

The inside front cover, provided by John Wade, at the Unversity of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues illustrates the replacement of an intramolecular disulfide bond in human relaxin-3 with a dicarba bond. Relaxin-3 is an insulin-like peptide that has potential applications in the treatment of stress and obesity. By replacing the disulfide bond with a physiologically stable dicarba bond, Wade hopes to increase the stability of the peptide in vivo. 

In this issue's Perspective, rated as hot by the referees, Helen Blackwell and Sarah Fowler from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, US, focus on the relationship between peptoid structure and function. It covers the most current areas of peptoid research, ranging from antimicrobial agents to lung surfactant mimics to zinc-binding nanostructures. 

The direct functionalisation of aromatic compounds, via Friedel-Crafts alkylation reactions with alcohols, is one of the cornerstones in organic chemistry. This issue's emerging area, by Marco Bandini and Michele Tragni at the University of Bologna, Italy, deals with the recent advances in the use of pi-activated alcohols in the catalytic and stereoselective construction of benzylic stereocentres. 

In their hot article, Rafael Luque and Duncan Macquarrie, at the University of York, UK, describe a solvent- and metal-free coupling reaction for creating carbon-carbon bonds.