Common Ground Research Articles

Exploring the Ne Bis in Idem principle: Material scope and application in EU law

This article examines and analyses the application of the ne bis in idem principle based on a final verdict of acquittal or conviction by a competent court where the cases have already been concluded by a final decision. It examines the principle concerning Article 4 of Protocol No. 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Article 4P7 ECHR), Article 50 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and its implication under Articles 54 to 58 of the Convention Implementing the Schengen Agreement (CISA). By reviewing previous literature, case law and fact sheets of the Court of Justice on the Ne bis in idem principle, the paper analyses the material scope of application of the principle and highlights the multifaceted significance of the Ne Bis in idem principle in criminal proceedings and the harmonisation of legal practices within the European Union. It reaffirms the principle's foundational importance in fostering fairness, legal certainty, and the protection of fundamental rights across a wide array of legal contexts. It elaborates and provides an interpretative analysis of the principle on the associated jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). The paper also shows that the ne bis in idem principle serves as a common ground for judicial cooperation in criminal matters and mutual recognition of the Council Framework Decision 2002/584/JHA concerning the European Arrest Warrant (‘EAW FD’) and Directive 2014/41/EU regarding the European Investigation Order in criminal matters.

Europe and Arab States’ Migration-related Instruments with Africa: Dilemma of Soft Power and Conflictual Interests

The national and regional interests of the European Union, oil-rich Gulf Cooperation Council and Africa are conflictual in addressing international labour migration. This underscores the structure and ineffectiveness of bilateral migration instruments. The European Union canvasses for migrants’ returns, readmission and outsourcing of national border controls; Arab states show reluctance to stop the predominant employer–sponsorship system that curtails labour migrants’ human rights, while African states detest migrants’ return and readmission, and prefer liberalisation of legal migration and flow of remittances. This article is anchored on the hegemonic stability and regime frame of interventionist liberalism theoretical perspectives to highlight Europe’s soft power in migration partnerships or agreements deployed via financial aid and development projects as a way to drive the migration-development-security nexus with African countries. Essentially, African states’ asymmetric economic relationship with Europe has accentuated the carrot-and-stick approach, while Arab states’ slow pace in allowing the mobility of African labour migrants has led to a reduction in remittance flows. It is recommended that the dialogues between the regional blocs and countries leading to labour migration agreements must find a common ground of mutual interests for effective partnerships to emerge.

Critical Rhetoric Meets Community-Based Participatory Research

ABSTRACT This project responds to a set of methodological challenges for the critical commitments of rhetorical fieldwork and investigates how community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods can help address them. As an example, we draw on Bailey Flynn’s CBPR research with Resilience, a not for-profit “rape crisis center” that provides services and therapy to thousands each year in Illinois. CBPR, like participatory critical rhetoric (PCR) methods, privileges field data as objects of rhetorical analysis. Unlike PCR and other approaches, CBPR methods prioritize the formalization of collaborative relationships with community stakeholders at every stage of research. We argue that greater integration of CBPR methods in rhetorical field methods will aid in privileging the epistemological perspectives of community stakeholders, solidifying critical communication scholarship’s commitment to conducting research with consequences, and providing a common ground for interdisciplinary exchange between critically trained rhetoric scholars and qualitative communication researchers.

On “gardens” and “cars”: Otto Jespersen’s metaphors for Interlinguistics and his quest for the best language

With this paper, I intend to present some theoretical contributions that Jespersen made to the field of Interlinguistics, by analysing some images he used for understanding the field of Interlinguistics and the character of interlanguages, based on his articles published from 1921 to 1933: “Artificial languages ​​after the World War” (AL 1921), “History of our language” (HL 1921); “Introduction, an international language” (IL 1928), “Interlinguistics” (I 1931) and “Nature and art in language” (NA 1933). I assume here a broad definition of Interlinguistics, as the interdisciplinary branch of linguistic knowledge dealing with international communication by means of interlanguages, which can be both ethnic languages used as a common ground for speakers of different mother tongues, and created languages, such as Esperanto, designed for international and intercultural communication. I approach particularly the concepts and terminology proposed by Jespersen to refer to these interlanguages and the parameters and norms for the construction, standardization and adoption of a planned language for international communication. I do not intend to present a general overview of Jespersen’s contributions to Theoretical Linguistics or to English Language Studies.

EXPRESS: Remembering visual and linguistic common ground in shared history.

Successful communication requires speakers and listeners to refer to information in their common ground. Shared history is one of the bases for common ground (Clark & Marshall, 1981), as information from a communicative episode in the past can be referred to in future communication. However, in order to draw upon shared history, communicative partners need to have an accurate memory record that they can refer to. The memory mechanism for shared history is poorly understood. The current study investigated the ways in which memory for shared history is prioritised. Two experiments presented a referential communication task followed by a surprise recognition memory task, with the former task serving as an episode of shared history. Experiment 1 revealed superior memory for information that was both seen in the communicators' common ground and referred to, followed by information that was seen but not referred to, followed by information privileged to the participants. Experiment 2 provided a replication of Experiment 1, and further demonstrated that these co-presence effects are not dependent on the presence of a speaker with a different perspective to the participant.

Bridging the Gulf Between Development Theory and Innovation Theory: The Imperative of Relational Justice

Phenomena of global development and technological innovation have been theorised and debated from an evolutionary common ground of social, economic, and technical change. However, apart from this common ground, there is a gulf that needs to be bridged. In several respects, development theory is preoccupied with social values such as inclusion and equality whereas innovation theory is preoccupied with economic values of economic growth and maximisation of aggregate utility. This gulf of competing values underpins public policies which are unable to deal with modern day crises such as poverty, inequality, environmental degradation, and unsustainable development. I argue that the gulf between development and innovation theories can be critically re-thought and permanently bridged using a relational notion of social justice that can allow inclusion/equality to be affirmed without disincentivising growth/utility. Such a notion of social justice should be only concerned with equalising resources in as long as this mitigates or eliminates relational inequalities such as hierarchies, oppression, and domination in globalised societies.

Christianity and Rationalism:

Maximus the Confessor and René Descartes were influential thinkers in their respective historical and philosophical contexts, but their philosophical orientations and concerns were distinct. Maximus was primarily a Christian theologian who integrated faith and reason within a theological framework, while Descartes was a key figure in the development of modern philosophy, emphasizing individual reason and scepticism as foundational elements of his philosophical system. This paper aims to present some aspects of their philosophy and try to find common ground in their thought.

From training to practice: long-term perspectives of graphic facilitation used in organisations

ABSTRACT Graphic facilitation is a growing international practice and is often used to describe what professionals do when visually facilitating group processes. Although the professional arena has grown, there is a lack of empirical research in the field, especially regarding long-term perspectives on applying the practice in organisations. This paper aims at investigating employees’ experiences and competence development over time within graphic facilitation. The study followed three employees, first in a 2-day basic graphic facilitation course, then in follow-up interviews, eight months, and two years after completing the course. The empirical data were analysed based on a literature review conducted on long-term perspectives, focusing on three themes: 1. The graphic facilitation practice at individual, group, and organisational level; 2. Contextual knowledge and knowing about the participants; 3. Relation between objects, processes and competencies needed. The findings show that all three employees from different organisations continued to use graphic facilitation and found it valuable for giving new insights and overviews of processes and tasks. The methods aided in creating common ground and goals. The employees activated their contextual organisational knowledge to aid the process and found that being sensitive to various groups’ needs and personal preferences were effective when applying the methods.

International Perspectives on Inclusion in Education: Exploring Common Ground from Different Angles

International Perspectives on Inclusion in Education: Exploring Common Ground from Different Angles

Differences and common ground in the frameworks of health-related quality of life in traditional Chinese medicine and modern medicine: a systematic review.

This systematic review aims to explore the conceptualization of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in China. With HRQoL influenced by both modern medicine (MM) and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the study seeks to identify differences and common ground between the frameworks of MM and TCM as defined in the literature. A systematic literature search was conducted across three Chinese databases and four English databases. The data was extracted including title, author(s), publication year, region, aim, method, category, and result. When sorting data, we broke down the HRQoL frameworks into concepts, domains and facets, with a focus on overlapped facets between the frameworks of MM and TCM. A total of 31 studies were included. In the perspective of TCM, HRQoL is centered around three key 'concepts': (1) 'xingshentongyi' (unity of body and spirit), (2) 'tianrenheyi' (harmony between man and nature), and (3) 'qiqing' (seven emotional forms). In contrast, the MM framework comprises 'physical,' 'mental,' 'social,' and 'environment' domains. Out of the 59 unique facets identified, 28 are common to both TCM and MM, 9 specific to TCM, and 22 specific to MM. 'Appetite,' 'sleep,' and 'energy' are the most frequently mentioned facets in both frameworks. The concept of HRQoL in China encompasses frameworks rooted in both TCM and MM. While TCM and MM have distinct healthcare approaches, they share overlapping domains when measuring HRQoL through questionnaires. Furthermore, TCM and MM demonstrate considerable convergence in terms of HRQoL facets, showing the potential for utilizing HRQoL instruments across different cultural settings.

From Blackboards to Gadgets: Unveiling Academic Dynamics and Digital Landscapes in Far Eastern University-Manila through the Integration of Technology in Classrooms

The researchers ought to shed light on the importance of educational technology in the student’s academic performance by looking into how students perceive the integration of educational technology in Far Eastern University–Manila, aiming to collect insights from 60 students and discuss how these students’ perception of the integration of technology affects their familiarity and confidence in utilizing innovative educational technologies. Using quantitative research method, the data were gathered through an online survey questionnaire to collect key insights on how students view technology integrated into their classes. The responses from the survey were analyzed by comparing and correlating their responses and finding their common grounds. Through the data analysis, the findings reveal that many of the students perceive integration of technology as something that is academically advantageous, utilizing diverse educational technologies to make their academic journey easier, more motivating, and more engaging. In the same responses, it is reported that few students still regard educational technology as a limitation that challenges their academic performance, limiting their performance in a way that distracts them from achieving their maximum focus and academic retention. These findings suggest that how students perceive the incorporation of different technological tools and platforms impacts how they perform in their classes by either developing or provoking regression in their capabilities and behavior.

Can Large Language Models Be Good Companions?

Developing chatbots as personal companions has long been a goal of artificial intelligence researchers. Recent advances in Large Language Models (LLMs) have delivered a practical solution for endowing chatbots with anthropomorphic language capabilities. However, it takes more than LLMs to enable chatbots that can act as companions. Humans use their understanding of individual personalities to drive conversations. Chatbots also require this capability to enable human-like companionship. They should act based on personalized, real-time, and time-evolving knowledge of their users. We define such essential knowledge as the common ground between chatbots and their users, and we propose to build a common-ground-aware dialogue system from an LLM-based module, named OS-1, to enable chatbot companionship. Hosted by eyewear, OS-1 can sense the visual and audio signals the user receives and extract real-time contextual semantics. Those semantics are categorized and recorded to formulate historical contexts from which the user's profile is distilled and evolves over time, i.e., OS-1 gradually learns about its user. OS-1 combines knowledge from real-time semantics, historical contexts, and user-specific profiles to produce a common-ground-aware prompt input into the LLM module. The LLM's output is converted to audio, spoken to the wearer when appropriate. We conduct laboratory and in-field studies to assess OS-1's ability to build common ground between the chatbot and its user. The technical feasibility and capabilities of the system are also evaluated. Our results show that by utilizing personal context, OS-1 progressively develops a better understanding of its users. This enhances user satisfaction and potentially leads to various personal service scenarios, such as emotional support and assistance.

Ion solvation in atomic baths: From snowballs to polarons

AbstractSolvation, the result of the complicated interplay between solvent–solute and solvent–internal interactions, is one of the most important chemical processes. Consequently, a complete theoretical understanding of solvation seems like a heroic task. However, it is possible to elucidate fundamental solvation mechanisms by looking into simpler systems, such as ion solvation in atomic baths. In this work, we study ion solvation by calculating the ground state properties of a single ion in a neutral bath from the high‐density to the low‐density regimes, finding common ground for these two, in principle, disparate regimes. Our results indicate that a single 174Yb+ ion in a bath of 7Li atoms forms a coordination complex at high densities with a coordination number of 8, with strong electrostriction characteristic of the snowball effect. On the contrary, treating the atomic bath as a dilute quantum gas at low densities, we find that the ion‐atom interaction's short‐range plays a significant role in the physics of many‐body‐bound states and polarons. Furthermore, in this regime, we explore the role of an ion trap necessary to experimentally realize this system, which drastically affects the binding mechanism of the ion and atoms from a quantum gas. Therefore, our results give a novel insight into the universality of ion‐neutral systems in the ultracold regime and the possibilities of observing exotic many‐body effects.Keypoints A global study of ion solvation in atomic baths from the high‐ to the low‐density regimes. The ion–atom short‐range interaction is critical to understanding the presence of many‐body‐bound states and polarons. The ion‐trapping potential drastically impacts many‐body‐bound states and polaron formation.

From polarity to plurality: Perceptions of COVID-19 and policy measures in England and Scotland.

The aim of this study was to uncover perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses implemented by the UK and Scottish Governments to help control the spread of infection. Such understanding could help to inform future responses to pandemics at individual, community and national levels. Q methodology was used to elicit perspectives from people in England and Scotland with different experiences of the pandemic including public health officials, key workers, those on furlough, those who were unvaccinated or vaccinated to different levels, those who were 'shielding' because they were at higher risk and people with different scientific expertise. Participants rank-ordered phrases about different aspects of COVID-19 according to their viewpoint. Factor analysis was then conducted in conjunction with interview material from the same respondents. A four-factor solution was statistically supported and was interpretable alongside the qualitative accounts of participants loading on these factors. These four perspectives are titled Dangerous and Unaccountable Leadership, Fear and Anger at Policy and Public responses, Governing Through a Crisis and Injustices Exposed. The four perspectives demonstrate plurality and nuance in views on COVID-19 and the associated policies and restrictions, going beyond a binary narrative that has been apparent in popular and social media. The four perspectives include some areas of common ground, as well as disagreement. We argue that understanding the detail of different perspectives might be used to build cohesion around policy initiatives in future. The development of the statement set, which is rank-ordered by participants in a Q study, and factor interpretations were informed by views of the general public. The statement set was initially developed using existing publicly available material based on members of the general public experiencing the pandemic first hand. It was then piloted with members of the public experiencing different challenges as a result of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown and updated based on feedback. Finally, interpretations of the identified factors were presented publicly and edited according to their feedback.

Different roads, same destination: The shared future of plant ecophysiology and ecohydrology.

Terrestrial water fluxes are substantially mediated by vegetation, while the distribution, growth, health, and mortality of plants are strongly influenced by the availability of water. These interactions, playing out across multiple spatial and temporal scales, link the disciplines of plant ecophysiology and ecohydrology. Despite this connection, the disciplines have provided complementary, but largely independent, perspectives on the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum since their crystallization as modern scientific disciplines in the late 20th century. This review traces the development of the two disciplines, from their respective origins in engineering and ecology, their largely independent growth and maturation, and the eventual development of common conceptual and quantitative frameworks. This common ground has allowed explicit coupling of the disciplines to better understand plant function. Case studies both illuminate the limitations of the disciplines working in isolation, and reveal the exciting possibilities created by consilience between the disciplines. The histories of the two disciplines suggest opportunities for new advances will arise from sharing methodologies, working across multiple levels of complexity, and leveraging new observational technologies. Practically, these exchanges can be supported by creating shared scientific spaces. This review argues that consilience and collaboration are essential for robust and evidence-based predictions and policy responses under global change.

Do Not Risk Homicide: Abortion After 10 Weeks Gestation.

When an abortion is performed, someone dies. Are we killing a human person? Widespread disagreement exists. However, it is not necessary to establish personhood in order to establish the wrongness of abortion: a substantial chance of personhood is enough. We defend The Do Not Risk Homicide Argument: abortions are wrong after 10 weeks gestation because they substantially and unjustifiably risk homicide, the unjust killing of a human person. Why 10 weeks? Because the cumulative evidence establishes a substantial chance (a more than one in five chance) that preborn human beings are persons after 10 weeks (if not before then). We submit evidence from our bad track record, widespread disagreement about personhood (after 10 weeks gestation), problems with theories of personhood, the similarity between preborn human beings and premature newborns, miscalculations of gestational age, and the common intuitive responses of women to their pregnancies and miscarriages. Our argument is cogent because it bypasses the stalemate over preborn personhood and rests on common ground rather than contentious metaphysics. It also strongly suggests that society must do more to protect preborn human beings. We briefly discuss its practical implications for fetal pain relief, social policy, and abortion law.

Your body tells how you engage in collaboration: Machine‐detected body movements as indicators of engagement in collaborative math knowledge building

AbstractCollaborative learning, driven by knowledge co‐construction and meaning negotiation, is a pivotal aspect of educational contexts. While gesture's importance in conveying shared meaning is recognized, its role in collaborative group settings remains understudied. This gap hinders accurate and equitable assessment and instruction, particularly for linguistically diverse students. Advancements in multimodal learning analytics, leveraging sensor technologies, offer innovative solutions for capturing and analysing body movements. This study employs these novel approaches to demonstrate how learners' machine‐detected body movements during the learning process relate to their verbal and nonverbal contributions to the co‐construction of embodied math knowledge. These findings substantiate the feasibility of utilizing learners' machine‐detected body movements as a valid indicator for inferring their engagement with the collaborative knowledge construction process. In addition, we empirically validate that these inferred different levels of learner engagement indeed impact the desired learning outcomes of the intervention. This study contributes to our scientific understanding of multimodal approaches to knowledge expression and assessment in learning, teaching, and collaboration.Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Previous research emphasizes the importance of gestures as essential tools for constructing common ground and reflecting shared meaning‐making in learning and teaching contexts. The prior studies in multimodal learning analytics (MMLA) suggest that certain forms of body movements and postures can be differentiated based on the automatic detection of upper body joint locations. Empirical observations indicate that co‐thought gestures typically involve smaller hand or arms movement that are closer to the gesturer's body than co‐speech gestures used in interpersonal communication. What this paper adds This paper fills the research gap by examining the use of gestures in collaborative learning, offering insights into how individuals contribute verbally and nonverbally to collaborative knowledge construction. This paper introduces the concept of using machine‐detected body movements as a viable proxy for inferring learners' engagement in collaborative knowledge‐building activities. Leverages sensor technologies for automatic detection of body movements, the innovative approach in this work seeks to overcome the time‐intensive and laborious process of manually coding gestures. Implications for practice and/or policy By recognizing the potential significance of learners' body movements in indicating engagement levels with collaborative knowledge‐building activities, instructors can set up computer‐supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments to enable capturing these movements. Given the crucial role of gestures in learning, teaching, and collaboration, educators can create more equitable formative assessment practices for linguistically diverse students by developing strategies that align with multimodal forms of knowledge expression. Research can expand beyond mathematics to explore the transferability of these findings to other subjects, helping educators create comprehensive pedagogical approaches that leverage multimodal interactions across disciplines.

Repeat it without me: Crowdsourcing the T1 mapping common ground via the ISMRM reproducibility challenge.

T1 mapping is a widely used quantitative MRI technique, but its tissue-specific values remain inconsistent across protocols, sites, and vendors. The ISMRM Reproducible Research and Quantitative MR study groups jointly launched a challenge to assess the reproducibility of a well-established inversion-recovery T1 mapping technique, using acquisition details from a seminal T1 mapping paper on a standardized phantom and in human brains. The challenge used the acquisition protocol from Barral et al. (2010). Researchers collected T1 mapping data on the ISMRM/NIST phantom and/or in human brains. Data submission, pipeline development, and analysis were conducted using open-source platforms. Intersubmission and intrasubmission comparisons were performed. Eighteen submissions (39 phantom and 56 human datasets) on scanners by three MRI vendors were collected at 3 T (except one, at 0.35 T). The mean coefficient of variation was 6.1% for intersubmission phantom measurements, and 2.9% for intrasubmission measurements. For humans, the intersubmission/intrasubmission coefficient of variation was 5.9/3.2% in the genu and 16/6.9% in the cortex. An interactive dashboard for data visualization was also developed: https://rrsg2020.dashboards.neurolibre.org. The T1 intersubmission variability was twice as high as the intrasubmission variability in both phantoms and human brains, indicating that the acquisition details in the original paper were insufficient to reproduce a quantitative MRI protocol. This study reports the inherent uncertainty in T1 measures across independent research groups, bringing us one step closer to a practical clinical baseline of T1 variations in vivo.

The Case for Multidisciplinary Frameworks for Developing Effective Solutions to Complex Human Problems: An Illustration Based on Development Education, Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Marketing

Education, especially development education (DE), and a number of socially focused disciplines, including corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social marketing (SM), have long been targeted by policy makers for deriving advice on the ‘wisdom’ of levelling up differences and addressing sources of disadvantages at individual, group and/or regional levels. Additionally, the combined wisdom of such disciplines can also be a great source of advice to effectively address perennial universal problems. This paper is conceptual in nature with a multidisciplinary outlook. It contrasts DE, CSR and SM, with the view to deriving common grounds as well as strengths and areas for further development that can produce more comprehensive explanations and solutions to social problems. Such inclusive, more comprehensive explanations would help advise social-cause-focused workers, including researchers, learners and policy makers, about how each discipline can contribute to the resolution of multifaceted problems, the so-called ‘wicked problems’, that each discipline may not be fully equipped to address. The method of analysis used is an adjusted version of critical discourse analysis. It is used to explore the disciplines at four levels, namely definitional, philosophical, methodological and performance levels, thus giving a comprehensive view of each discipline’s nature, philosophical outlook, methodology and perceived efficacy in achieving its aims. The derived arguments also benefitted from comments provided by seven experienced representatives from the three disciplines. Overall, the outcomes suggest a relative maturity of critical ability in DE but also more effective and efficient methodological and evaluative perspectives in CSR and SM. Although the outcome of the analysis is open for debate, it nevertheless suggests several opportunities for mutual learning at all four levels. The paper suggests a novel integrated ‘supra-level’ framework that may help workers, in these three areas of knowledge, gain valuable insights from each of the three disciplines and highlight valuable opportunities for capitalising on their respective strengths.

Unfulfilled habits: on the affective consequences of turning down affordances for social interaction

AbstractMany pragmatist and non-representational approaches to cognition, such as the enactivist, have focused on the relations between actions, affectivity, and habits from an intersubjective perspective. For those adopting such approaches, all these aspects are inextricably connected; however, many questions remain open regarding the dynamics by which they unfold and shape each other over time. This paper addresses a specific topic that has not received much attention: the impact on future behavior of not fulfilling possibilities for social interaction even though their fulfillment is desirable within a given context. Inspired by Gibson’s theory of affordances and Dewey’s account of habits, these situations will be characterized as events where an agent does not act upon an inviting affordance for social interaction due to a conflict which he or she experiences between given concerns, needs, and social norms. This conflict leads to a sense of unfulfillment that may eventually bring about a crisis and revision of habits. Through specific examples, this work presents the potential impact of the connection between affordances, habits, and affectivity on everyday situations. It therefore represents an exploration of the common ground between pragmatism and enactivism and an attempt to contribute to a process-based approach to social interaction.