This thesis analyzes Rabi­ Yehuda Halevy synagogue, which Victor Babani designed and Francisco Canovas built from 1941 to 1942 in the Colonia Roma Sur of Mexico City. I focus on its formal characteristics, as well as its socio-historical context. I examine late-nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century life for Sephardic Jews in Mexico: their cause for immigration, experience in their new homeland, and relations with other Jewish groups and non-Jews in the city. I explore the use of style and iconography in the synagogue in relation to the history and prior employment of these architectural features. Defining "style" in the Rabi­ Yehuda Halevy demands an understanding of the employment of a particular formal language in the design of minority groups' architecture. The process of finding a style to portray national identity in Mexico was parallel to the Mexican Sephardim's use of architecture to articulate their own identity in the city.

Dose as a result of radiation exposure is the notion generally used to disclose the imparted energy in a volume of tissue to a potential biological effect. The basic unit defined by the international system of units (SI system) is the radiation absorbed dose, which is expressed as the mean imparted energy in a mass element of the tissue known as "gray" (Gy) or J/kg. The procedure for ascertaining the absorbed dose is complicated since it involves the radiation transport of numerous types of charged particles and coupled photon interactions. The most precise method is to perform a full 3D Monte Carlo simulation of the radiation transport. There are various Monte Carlo toolkits that have tool compartments for dose calculations and measurements. The dose studies in this thesis were performed using the GEANT4 Application for Emission Tomography (GATE) software (Janet al., 2011) GATE simulation toolkit has been used extensively in the medical imaging community, due to the fact that it uses the full capabilities of GEANT4. It also utilizes an easy to-learn GATE macro language, which is more accessible than learning the GEANT4/C++ programming language. This work combines GATE with digital phantoms generated using the NCAT (NURBS-based cardiac-torso phantom) toolkit (Segars et al., 2004) to allow efficient and effective estimation of 3D radiation dose maps. The GATE simulation tool has developed into a beneficial tool for Monte Carlo simulations involving both radiotherapy and imaging experiments. This work will present an overview of absorbed dose of common radionuclides used in nuclear medicine and serve as a guide to a user who is setting up a GATE simulation for a PET and SPECT study.