Word: convert
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...adulthood and followed months of instruction in the use of plants and herbs in healing. Bernard, now in his late 30s, was among the last of his cult to be initiated. Acting in deference to a Catholic abbot who regarded the traditions as pagan, N'donazi's father, a convert, ordered the destruction of the male house, where boys acquired the learning of their elders. With that, a cultural and medical tradition that extended back to antiquity went up in flames...
...knew was an empty fraud. In the months preceding the coup and collapse there were signs that top party bosses, sensing the end was near, had begun looting the treasury. The newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported a series of shady real estate deals involving top party officials and attempts to convert soft ruble accounts into hard currency. Just before the party lost control of the Moscow City Council, for example, the Communist chairman, Valeri Saikin, transferred 33 city buildings to the party free of charge. Top party leaders bought their palatial government-owned country houses for ludicrously low prices. Former Politburo...
...reportedly shared in Yazov's plans was arrested; General Boris Gromov, a hero of the Afghan war thought to have been in charge of Interior Ministry forces in the coup, is another likely target. Officers and civilians in the military- industrial complex, which has fought Gorbachev's efforts to convert more defense plants to civilian purposes, can be expected to fall as well. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, 68, former chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces and top military advisor to Gorbachev, committed suicide on Saturday night, though his link to the plot was not clear...
Imagine an amplifier powerful enough to convert the inaudible whir of butterfly wings into a mighty roar. That's what a new tool called PCR routinely does to the most infinitesimal snippets of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic blueprint for all living things. Within the space of a few hours, an unprepossessing aluminum box stuffed with test tubes can create a billion copies of what started out as a single strip of DNA. A dividing cancer cell would take at least a month to perform the same stupendous feat. "This technique," marvels Dr. Harley Rotbart, a microbiologist...
...Seven said they would provide technical assistance in developing the Soviet transport network, legal and banking systems, energy resources and food production. They also offered to help convert Soviet military industries, which, according to some estimates, still account for about 20% of the gross national product, to civilian production. The G-7 chairman -- Major until the end of the year, then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl -- will visit the U.S.S.R. "to keep in close touch" with the progress of reforms...