The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in preventative measures and has led to extensive changes in lifestyle for the vast majority of the American population. As the pandemic progresses, a growing amount of evidence shows that minority groups, such as the Deaf community, are often disproportionately and uniquely affected. Deaf people are directly affected in their ability to personally socialize and continue with daily routines. More specifically, this can constitute their ability to meet new people, connect with friends/family, and to perform in their work or learning environment. It also may result in further mental health changes and an increased reliance on technology. The impact of COVID-19 on the Deaf community in clinical settings must also be considered. This includes changes in policies for in-person interpreters and a rise in telehealth. Often, these effects can be representative of the pre-existing low health literacy, frequency of miscommunication, poor treatment, and the inconvenience felt by Deaf people when trying to access healthcare. Ultimately, these effects on the Deaf community must be taken into account when attempting to create a full picture of the societal shift caused by COVID-19.

We present the isotope yields of two post-explosion, three-dimensional 15 M_sol core-collapse supernova models, 15S and 15A, and compare them to the carbon, nitrogen, silicon, aluminum, sulfur, calcium, titanium, iron, and nickel isotopic compositions of presolar SiC stardust. We find that material from the interior of a core-collapse supernova can form a rare subset of SiC stardust, called SiC D grains, characterized by enrichments of the isotopes 13C and 15N. The innermost material of these core-collapse supernovae is operating in the neutrino-driven regime and undergoes rapid proton capture early in the explosion, providing these isotopes which are not present in such large abundances in other stardust grains of supernova origin.

For this thesis, the energy of the CXLS electron beam was measured and the beam’s energy jitter was calculated. It is essential to characterize the beam’s en- ergy and energy jitter in order to ensure that the powerful x-rays produced by CXLS will be of a consistent and desirable energy. The energy of the electrons within the electron beam can be calculated through utilizing basic physics prin- ciples and the geometry of the beamline. The energy of the beam for the data collected was found to be 3.426 MeV at POP module 1 and 12.3 MeV at POP module 9. The energy jitter of the beam was determined for four different angle settings of the VPSPD for linac 1 and found to be lowest when the linac 1 VPSPD was set to an angle of 97°. The energy jitter of the beam was 1.50e-03 MeV when the VPSPD for linac 1 was set to 97°.