http://hdl.handle.net/10453/35207 2026-04-10T11:01:42Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/194619 Title: Risky alcohol use and violence against women: cause or consequence? Authors: Weatherburn, D; Rahman, S; Wang, J Abstract: AIM: The aim of the current study was to determine (a) whether there is a relationship between the quantity of alcohol consumed by a woman when drinking alcohol and the risk of physical violence and (b) whether experiencing physical violence increases the quantity of alcohol consumed by a woman. METHODS: The research questions were addressed by fitting a series of random and fixed effect logistic regression models to data drawn from 22 waves of the HILDA survey, a nationally representative longitudinal survey of Australian households. The dataset for the current study involves 143,517 survey responses from 15,934 women. We examine (1) the cross-sectional relationship between alcohol use and physical violence among women (2) the relationship between alcohol use (or violence) at wave t and physical violence (or alcohol use) at wave t + 1 and (3) the within-subject relationship between alcohol use and physical violence (and vice versa). RESULTS: The risk of is nine per cent for a woman who consumes 1-2 standard drinks at a sitting, 15 per cent for a woman who consumes 7 to 8 standard drinks at a sitting and 20 per cent for a woman who normally consumes 13 or more standard drinks at a sitting. Controlling for other factors, a woman who reports having been assaulted in the previous 12 months consumes an average of 13 per cent more alcohol at a sitting than a woman who has not been assaulted in the previous 12 months. CONCLUSION: Prevention resources are always limited and are therefore best targeted at those who are most at risk, regardless of whether the correlate plays a causal role or is simply a signal of heightened risk. Women reporting they have been assaulted to health, welfare or criminal justice authorities should be assessed to determine whether they also have concurrent drug and alcohol problems. 2025-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/194597 Title: Excitons in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides in electric and magnetic fields Authors: Engdahl, JN; Scammell, HD; Efimkin, DK; Sushkov, OP Abstract: The magnetic-field dependence of photoabsorption provides direct insights into the band structure of semiconductors. It is perhaps surprising that there is a large discrepancy between electron, hole, and reduced mass reported in the recent literature. Motivated by this puzzle we reconsider excitonic magnetoabsorption and find that the commonly employed perturbative approach, namely for computing the diamagnetic shift, is inadequate to account for the parameter ranges considered in existing data. In particular, we develop the theory for strong magnetic field and, upon analysis of the data, arrive at the set of exciton parameters different to what has been estimated perturbatively in the literature. Only s-wave excitons are visible in photoluminescence as the spectral weight of p-wave states is too small, this limits the amount of information that can be extracted about the underlying band structure. To overcome this, we propose to study p-wave states by mixing them with s-wave states by external in-plane electric field and show that a moderate dc electric field would provide sufficient mixing to brighten p-wave states. We calculate energies of the p-wave states including the effects of valley-orbital splitting and the orbital Zeeman shift, and show that this provides direct information on the electron-hole mass asymmetry. 2025-01-15T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/194596 Title: Extended Kinship Inference Part 2: Evaluation of the Impact of Information Loss on Likelihood Ratios and Haplotype Matching Authors: Watson, JL; Grisedale, K; Coakley, L; McNevin, D; Ward, J Abstract: Medium-density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) profiles enable law enforcement to infer close and distant genetic relationships. Part one of this study demonstrated that the ForenSeq® Kintelligence Kit, which targets 10,230 SNPs, can facilitate extended kinship inference through kinship likelihood ratio (LR) and identical by descent (IBD) segment matching methods. However, if SNPs are not detected, or are incorrectly called, the ability to detect genetic relatives and accurately classify the relationship may be compromised. The Kintelligence profiles for the central individuals of two pedigrees described in Part One were edited to simulate information loss through locus and allele dropout. LRs were calculated with DBLR™ and SNP profiles were uploaded to GEDmatch PRO™ for database searching or direct comparison. The LRs decreased with increasing information loss but still provided strong statistical support for relatedness. LRs exceeded 100,000 for all full sibling to fifth degree relationships for up to 30% locus and allele dropout. Locus dropout did not significantly impact the ability to infer first to fifth degree relationships with IBD segment matching. Allele dropout had a greater impact, with 30% allele dropout impairing the ability to classify relationships to their correct degree. When allele dropout was greater than 10%, the fifth degree relative was no longer detected in the database search. This study highlights the robustness of LR calculations and the GEDmatch PRO™ IBD segment matching algorithms and the suitability of the Kintelligence Kit for medium-range kinship inference, with the algorithm maintaining the ability to infer relationships despite increasing information loss. 2025-03-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10453/194595 Title: Extended Kinship Inference Part 1: Evaluation of Short Tandem Repeats and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Using Likelihood Ratios and Haplotype Matching Authors: Watson, JL; Grisedale, K; Coakley, L; McNevin, D; Ward, J Abstract: Medium- and long-range kinship analysis using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping allows law enforcement to generate investigative leads by identifying an unknown individual through their close and distant genetic relatives. Short-range kinship inference can be conducted through calculation of likelihood ratios (LRs) using population allele frequency data and the degree of similarity between two DNA profiles but has historically been limited to short tandem repeat (STR) profiles. Alternatively, identical by descent (IBD) segment matching algorithms can be used to detect shared DNA haplotypes between two genetically related individuals that have been inherited from a common ancestor. The ForenSeq® Kintelligence Kit enables law enforcement and forensic laboratories to utilize medium-density SNP sequencing technology for extended kinship inference by analyzing 10,230 SNPs. In this study, DNA from two pedigrees was used to compare the ability of STR profiles, identity-informative SNP (iiSNP) profiles, Kintelligence profiles and Kintelligence and direct-to-consumer profiles available on public genetic genealogy databases to detect and classify genetic relationships. The DNA profiles were analyzed using DBLR™ software to calculate kinship LRs or uploaded to GEDmatch PRO™ for IBD segment matching with either database searching or one-to-one comparisons. The LRs calculated for STR and iiSNP profiles were able to correctly infer first degree relationships (i.e., parent, offspring, and full sibling), with the combined discrimination power able to distinguish between second degree relationships. LRs calculated for the Kintelligence profiles exceeded one million for 93% of full sibling to fifth degree relationships tested. IBD segment matching was effective for detecting first to fifth degree relatives when Kintelligence profiles were searched on the GEDmatch PRO™ database. The results of this study demonstrate that the Kintelligence Kit is a valuable tool for law enforcement and forensic investigators, offering an advanced method for medium-range kinship testing using either LRs or IBD segment matching. 2025-03-01T00:00:00Z