Farmer attacks kids with hammer, burns self

Security tightened at Chinese schools after 3rd rampage in as many days

BEIJING - A farmer wielding a hammer attacked kindergarten students Friday, injuring five, before burning himself to death in the third horrific assault on Chinese schools in as many days, state media reported.

Wang Yonglai used a motorcycle to break down the gate of the Shangzhuang Primary School in the eastern city of Weifang and struck a teacher who tried to block him before hitting students with the hammer, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Wang then grabbed two children before pouring gasoline over his body and setting fire to himself. Teachers were able to pull the children away to safety, but Wang died. None of the five injured students had life-threatening injuries, Xinhua said.

The attack was confirmed by an employee at the Weifang Public Security news office in Shandong province, but the motive for Wang's rampage was unclear. Xinhua described him only as a local farmer.

Most of the recent school attacks have been blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness — seen as a growing problem because of feelings of social injustice and alienation in the fast-changing country.

The government on Friday issued an urgent directive to schools to tighten security.

The hammer attack follows a rampage Thursday by a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an eight-inch knife at a kindergarten. Some 29 students, aged 4 or 5 years old, were wounded, five of them seriously at the school in Taixing city in neighboring Jiangsu province.

And on Wednesday, a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the city of Leizhou in southern Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife. The attacker had been on sick leave from another school since 2006 for mental health problems.

In all, there have been five such attacks on schools in just over a month and many more in preceding months and years — although gun crime and other extreme violence in China is comparatively rare. Sociologists suspect the recent school rampages — usually by lone, male attackers — could be copycat actions.

The Education Ministry's directive Friday, posted on its website, called for schools and local education departments to "strengthen the security activities at schools to ensure the safety of students and teachers," particularly at particularly elementary and middle schools.

It urged "concrete actions" including strictly implementing a rule already on the books to register all visitors coming to school campuses and preventing unidentified people from entering.

Calls for beefing up security at schools are nothing new. They were initially ordered by the central government in 2004 following an attack that year that left nine students dead at a Beijing school. Since 2006, schools have been required to register or inspect all visitors.

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According to news reports, the latest attacks have prompted schools in various parts of the country to take action. In a district of southern Nanjing City, guards will be armed from Saturday with police batons and pepper spray. In Beijing's Xicheng district, guards at kindergarten, elementary and middle schools have been given long-handled metal restraint poles with a hook on the end. In eastern Jinan city, police posts are being built on elementary and middle schools campuses.

In an editorial Friday, the English-language China Daily said that security should be tightened at all schools nationwide, but stressed the need to prevent attacks in the first place.

Video   Man attacks children in China April 29: A 47-year-old man has been taken in to custody in Jiangsu province, China, after he reportedly stabbed 28 children, two teachers and a security guard. Today show

"It can be easy to put killers on trial and execute them but it is far more difficult to find out the deep-seated causes behind such horrifying acts. Our efforts should be focused on preventing these from happening," it said. "We should find out what propelled them to such extremes. What problems do they have? Could anyone have helped, especially the authorities?"

Accounts in China's state media have largely glossed over what motivates attackers, but experts say outbursts against the defenseless are frequently due to social pressures. An egalitarian society only a generation ago, China's headlong rush to prosperity has sharpened differences between the rich and poor, while the public health system has atrophied.

China likely has about 173 million adults with mental health disorders, and 158 million of them have never had professional help, according to a mental health survey in four provinces jointly done by Chinese and U.S. doctors that was published in the medical journal The Lancet in June.

 

What women eat may affect kids, grandkids

High-fat diet during pregnancy could raise cancer risk for generations

While cancer victims usually blame themselves — I shouldn't have smoked, should have eaten better, should have exercised — or the cruelty of chance, they may now have a new scapegoat: Grandma.

Eating poorly during pregnancy can increase your children's and your grandchildren's risk of cancer, even if they themselves eat healthily, a new study on rats suggests.

The risk associated with high-fat diets, especially those high in omega-6 fatty acids, "can be passed from one generation to another without any further exposure," said lead researcher Sonia de Assis of Georgetown University.

 While done in rats, the diets used by the study mirrored some typical American eating habits, and so the researchers suspect the results could hold for humans as well.

The research was presented last week at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting in Washington D.C.

During the study, some pregnant rats were fed a diet high in omega-6 fat while others received standard fare. After the babies were delivered, all the mothers, their children and their eventual grandchildren ate healthy moderate-fat diets.

Granddaughters of the rats that gobbled excess fat during pregnancy had a 30-percent greater chance of developing breast cancer than those with grandparents who ate healthfully. When only one grandmother, on either the mother's or father's side, had indulged, the granddaughter's disease risk was 19-percent higher.

For the high-fat diet, the study used a chow that was 43-percent fat, predominantly from omega-6 rich vegetable oil. Most recommendations for a healthy diet include keeping fat intake at 25 to 30 percent, de Assis told LiveScience, "but with fast foods and everything, a lot of people eat more than that each day."

Fat gone rogueThis should not imply that fat causes cancer — many fats are quite good for you, after all. But it is more bad news for omega-6 fatty acids, found in corn oil and most non-grass-fed meats.

Omega 6s, while essential to a healthy diet, should be balanced with omega 3s. The optimum ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 is likely between 4:1 to 1:1, but in the typical American diet the ratio is more like between 20 and 16:1. This imbalance has previously been linked to a host of health problems, including depression, infertility, heart disease and, yes, cancer.

In the new study, the researchers theorize the increased cancer risk might be a result of the epigenetic effects of omega-6 fats. (Epigenetics refers to the idea that even if genes themselves aren't altered, how they function can change.) Omega 6s may indirectly turn off genes that slow cell apoptosis (normal cell death). Cells can then proliferate and lead to tumors, which are essentially a bundle of multiplying cells gone wild.

Somehow, the fat must also be affecting the "germ line," the pathways that lead to viable sperm and eggs, for the effect to be crossing multiple generations.

DNA is not in the driver's seat
Epigenome, which literally means "on top of the genome," refers to all the factors that control how a gene is expressed. The new study potentially adds to the growing body of research suggesting the epigenome may be at the root of many health problems.

"People think there is nothing you can do (about your disease risk)," said researcher Rod Dashwood of Oregon State University, who gave a lecture on epigenetics at the Experimental Biology 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif. "But you are not just what your genes are." (Dashwood has conducted separate research from de Assis.)

Rather, you are your genes under the influence of your epigenome, which, during critical periods, is shaped by your environment, your lifestyle, your life experience — and those of your immediate ancestors.

"Genes only account for 5 to 10 percent of the familial risk of breast cancer," said de Assis, by way of illustration. Something inherited in the epigenome could account for the rest.

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For decades, studies have been associating diet with disease risk. Now, research on the epigenome may be revealing the mechanism at play.

For example, Dashwood's work indicates that many whole foods — including broccoli sprouts, onions, garlic, radishes, wasabi, daikon, horseradish and wheat bran — may help prevent epigenetic processes that lead to degenerative diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, stroke and even aging.

"The (epigenetic) effect may be contributing to the overall health benefits of these particular foods," Dashwood told LiveScience.

While the multi-generational impact of veggies has not been studied, Dashwood said, "some epigenetic marks can go through six, seven generations."

More research is needed but the lunchroom choice between a bacon-cheeseburger or stir-fry may not only affect your own health, but that of your children and grandchildren.