Testing the Waters: California's Local Officials Experiment with New Ways to Engage the Public

This report explores the attitudes of California's local officials toward public participation in local governance. These officials believe that the current models for including the public in local decision making fail to meet the needs of both residents and local officials. Most local officials seek broad-based participation from the public and want to hear more about approaches that have worked elsewhere. Many are already experimenting with more inclusive and deliberative forms of engagement. Overall, this study suggests California's local officials may be ready for newer and more effective ways to engage the public and for stronger collaborations with community-based organizations. The report also includes concrete recommendations for local officials and their institutions, civic leaders and their organizations, and foundations and other funders. The recommendations can help improve public engagement in local governance throughout California and, we hope, beyond

Beyond Business as Usual: Leaders of California's Civic Organizations Seek New Ways to Engage the Public in Local Governance

We asked leaders of California's civic and community-based organizations about their views on the state of public participation in local governance. The following report explores what these civic leaders say is working, what's not, and how public engagement can be improved. Traditional models for including the public in local decision making, these leaders say, fail to meet the needs of both residents and local officials. Most see significant value and potential in more inclusive and deliberative forms of engagement, and many agree local officials are making increasing efforts to include residents more meaningfully. Overall, this research suggests civic and community-based organizations are looking for newer and more effective ways to engage the public and may be ready for stronger collaborations with local government. The report also includes concrete recommendations for local officials and their institutions, civic leaders and their organizations, and foundations and other funders. The recommendations can help improve public engagement in local governance throughout California and, we hope, beyond

Optical nano-woodpiles: large-area metallic photonic crystals and metamaterials.

Metallic woodpile photonic crystals and metamaterials operating across the visible spectrum are extremely difficult to construct over large areas, because of the intricate three-dimensional nanostructures and sub-50 nm features demanded. Previous routes use electron-beam lithography or direct laser writing but widespread application is restricted by their expense and low throughput. Scalable approaches including soft lithography, colloidal self-assembly, and interference holography, produce structures limited in feature size, material durability, or geometry. By multiply stacking gold nanowire flexible gratings, we demonstrate a scalable high-fidelity approach for fabricating flexible metallic woodpile photonic crystals, with features down to 10 nm produced in bulk and at low cost. Control of stacking sequence, asymmetry, and orientation elicits great control, with visible-wavelength band-gap reflections exceeding 60%, and with strong induced chirality. Such flexible and stretchable architectures can produce metamaterials with refractive index near zero, and are easily tuned across the IR and visible ranges.We acknowledge financial support from EPSRC grant EP/G060649/1, EP/I012060/1, EP/L027151/1, ERC grants LINASS 320503 and 3DIMAGE 291522, EU FP7 280478, and the Leverhulme Trust and Rolls-Royce plc.This is the final version of the article, originally published in Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 8313. DOI: 10.1038/srep08313

GROMACS: High performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers

AbstractGROMACS is one of the most widely used open-source and free software codes in chemistry, used primarily for dynamical simulations of biomolecules. It provides a rich set of calculation types, preparation and analysis tools. Several advanced techniques for free-energy calculations are supported. In version 5, it reaches new performance heights, through several new and enhanced parallelization algorithms. These work on every level; SIMD registers inside cores, multithreading, heterogeneous CPU–GPU acceleration, state-of-the-art 3D domain decomposition, and ensemble-level parallelization through built-in replica exchange and the separate Copernicus framework. The latest best-in-class compressed trajectory storage format is supported

Electrochemically Switchable Multimode Strong Coupling in Plasmonic Nanocavities

The strong-coupling interaction between quantum emitters and cavities provides the archetypical platform for fundamental quantum electrodynamics. Here we show that methylene blue (MB) molecules interact coherently with subwavelength plasmonic nanocavity modes at room temperature. Experimental results show that the strong coupling can be switched on and off reversibly when MB molecules undergo redox reactions which transform them to leuco-methylene blue molecules. In simulations we demonstrate the strong coupling between the second excited plasmonic cavity mode and resonant emitters. However, we also show that other detuned modes simultaneously couple efficiently to the molecular transitions, creating unusual cascades of mode spectral shifts and polariton formation. This is possible due to the relatively large plasmonic particle size resulting in reduced mode splittings. The results open significant potential for device applications utilizing active control of strong coupling