Word: conventional
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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SENTENCED. FOUR RWANDANS, including two Catholic nuns; to prison terms of 12 to 20 years; for their roles in the 1994 Hutu extermination of the Tutsi in Rwanda; in Brussels. The nuns turned over as many as 7,000 people seeking refuge in their convent to the Hutu militia...
...years before entering the order, that had differed--and memory, even among the mentally competent, is notoriously unreliable. But then, after several months, he stumbled on two olive-green metal file cabinets--the personal records of all the young women who had taken their vows at the Mankato convent. "Everything changed when we discovered the archives," says Snowdon...
...life (most of the sisters were teachers; many had master's degrees). And breaking with academic tradition--but establishing one of his own--Snowdon first presented his conclusions, not through a journal or a conference but directly to the nuns. Recalls Sister Rita Schwalbe, then one of the convent's administrators: "He threw us a thank-you party, and we thought that...
...leading Alzheimer's researchers, who explained to him that the elderly women represented an ideal population for studying this mysterious disease. On average, 10% of people over 65 come down with Alzheimer's, a number that rises to 50% by age 85. Given the aging population of the convent, they knew that a significant proportion of the nuns would have the disease...
...more than 90% of the sisters living in the Mankato convent agreed to donate their brains. After visiting six other convents, Snowdon ended up with a 68% consent rate overall, one of the highest in any tissue-donation study. "I didn't really know what it was going to be about," says Sister Nicolette, an engaging 93-year-old who is the only one of the 16 girls who took their vows in 1925 to both survive and remain mentally intact. "But I thought if science could learn something from this program, then I was glad to be a part...