Trust, discrimination and acculturation Experimental evidence on Asian international and Australian domestic university students

Intercultural relations between Australia and Asia are pivotal to the economic prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region. However, there appears to be tension between Australian domestic and Asian international students at universities in Australia. To measure the degree of trust and patterns of discrimination between these groups, the Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe (1995) trust game and a series of control games were used in framework where each participant played each game against several partners. Controlling for individual heterogeneity, domestic students significantly discriminated against international students in the trust game, and individual discrimination was preference-based rather than based on beliefs towards international students’ trustworthiness. Moreover, the degree of in-group favouritism shown by domestic students was negatively correlated with the Big Five personality trait of Openness. Intercultural patterns across the games also pointed to a willingness of international students to build relations with domestic students. However, the average amount that they sent in the trust game was negatively related with the number of semesters studied at university in Australia, which may partly reflect cultural adjustment but also institutional disadvantages faced specifically by international students. The study furthers understanding of the patterns of discrimi-nation between domestic and international university students, the nature of this discrimination, and illustrates the extent of challenges faced by the Australian tertiary education sector.rust, discrimination, intercultural differences, economic experiments

Non-Equilibrium Ionization Model for Stellar Cluster Winds and its Application

We have developed a self-consistent physical model for super stellar cluster winds based on combining a 1-D steady-state adiabatic wind solution and a non-equilibrium ionization calculation. Comparing with the case of collisional ionization equilibrium, we find that the non-equilibrium ionization effect is significant in the regime of a high ratio of energy to mass input rate and manifests in a stronger soft X-ray flux in the inner region of the star cluster. Implementing the model in X-ray data analysis softwares (e.g., XSPEC) directly facilitates comparisons with X-ray observations. Physical quantities such as the mass and energy input rates of stellar winds can be estimated by fitting observed X-ray spectra. The fitted parameters may then be compared with independent measurements from other wavelengths. Applying our model to the star cluster NGC 3603, we find that the wind accounts for no more than 50% of the total "diffuse" emission, and the derived mass input rate and terminal velocity are comparable to other empirical estimates. The remaining emission most likely originate from numerous low-mass pre-main-sequence stellar objects.Comment: 29 pages, 17 figures. accepted by MNRA