The increasing integration of technology into our lives has created unprecedented volumes of data on society’s everyday behaviour. Such data opens up exciting new opportunities to work...

We discuss the mean-field theory for a class of probabilistic cellular automata that can describe the dynamics of social impact. The models exhibit complex intermittent behavior.

New isomeric states in the neutron-rich nuclei near the $Z=28\mathrm{}$ and $N=40\mathrm{}$ shell closures have been identified among the reaction products of a $60.3A$ MeV ${}^{86}\mathrm{Kr}$ beam on a ${}^{\mathrm{nat}}\mathrm{Ni}$ target. From the measured isomeric decay properties information about the excited states and their nuclear structure has been obtained. The isomerism is related mostly to the occupation of the neutron $g_{9/2}$ orbital, an intruder level in the $N=3\mathrm{}$ $\mathrm{fp}$ shell. It is illustrated with the decay properties of ${}^{69}{\mathrm{Ni}}^m$, ${}^{70}{\mathrm{Ni}}^m$, and ${}^{71}{\mathrm{Cu}}^m$ interpreted within the nuclear shell model.

Human experience reflects the interplay of multiple forces operating on various time scales to promote constantly evolving patterns of thought, emotion, and action. The complexity and dynamism of personal and social phenomena have long been recognized, but capturing these features of psychological process represents a serious challenge for traditional research methods. In this article, we introduce basic concepts and methods from the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, and we outline the relevance of these ideas and approaches for investigating phenomena at different levels of psychological reality. We suggest that the dynamical perspective is ideally suited to capture the emergence and maintenance of global properties in a psychological system, and for investigating the time-dependent relation between external influences and a system's internally generated forces. Although fairly new to personality and social psychology, the dynamical perspective has been implemented with respect to a wide variety of phenomena, utilizing both empirical methods and computer simulations. This diversity of topics and methods is reflected in the articles comprising the special issue.

Decades of research on social conflict has contributed to researchers' understanding of a wide variety of psychological, social, and community-based aspects of conflict escalation and intractability. However, the field has yet to put forth a theoretical model that links these components to the basic underlying structures and dynamics that account for intractability and transformation. This article presents a dynamical systems approach to conceptualizing intractable conflict as a preliminary step toward developing a basic theory of intractability. The authors propose that it is particularly useful to conceptualize ongoing, destructive patterns of conflict as strong attractors, a particular form of self-organization of multiple elements of conflict systems. Their dynamical approach to conflict intractability is outlined, and some preliminary implications of this approach for conflict de-escalation are discussed.

Intractable conflicts are demoralizing. Beyond destabilizing the families, communities, or international regions in which they occur, they tend to perpetuate the very conditions of misery and hate that contributed to them in the first place. Although the common factors and processes associated with intractable conflicts have been identified through research, they represent an embarrassment of riches for theory construction. Thus, the current task in this area is integrating these diverse factors into an account that provides a coherent perspective yet allows for prediction and a basis for conflict resolution in specific conflict settings. We suggest that the perspective of dynamical systems provides such an account. This article outlines the key concepts and hypotheses associated with this approach. It is organized around a set of basic questions concerning intractable conflict for which the dynamical perspective offers fresh insight and testable propositions. The questions and answers are intended to provide readers with basic concepts and principles of complexity and dynamical systems that are useful for rethinking the nature of intractable conflict and the means by which such conflict can be transformed.