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Microwave ovens pose a serious safety hazard to young children. Researchers from America studied 140 children below 5 years of age who were admitted with scald burns to investigate the mechanism of significant scald burns and to discover insights into prevention, Health News reported.

Two types of patterns of injuries were discovered one was burns due to water heaters and the other due to microwave ovens.

It was found that, out of 140 children with scald injuries, 118 children had unintentional injuries. Of those unintentional injuries 14 were tap water scalds and 104 were non-tap water scalds.

Out of non-tap water scalds, 94 scalds were related to hot cooking or drinking liquids. Nine children between the ages of 18 months and 4 years were scalded after opening a microwave oven and removing the hot substance themselves.

Seventeen children were scalded while an older child 7 to 14 years of age, was cooking or carrying the scalding substance or supervising the younger child.

Efforts to prevent scald injuries focus on asking parents to turn down their water heaters so that water temperature never exceeds 120 degrees.

For injuries caused due to microwave, it was suggested to install mechanisms to prevent children from opening a microwave after something had been heated to prevent injuries. It could be difficult to keep young children away from kitchen hazards, especially if an adult is alone at home and trying to cook dinner.

Tap water scalds represent just a fraction of scald injuries overall; but hot foods or liquids from microwave ovens were the fourth leading cause of scald injuries in children under 5 years old.

The researchers suggested that parents should teach their children that the microwave is a potential source of danger as much as the stove is.

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Studying for exams? Remember to load yourself with fatty food before you attempt the test, for a new study says that it could boost your results.

An international team has found that indulging in a fatty meal after studying for exam could help in remembering the facts as fat produces a hormone which aids the brain in cementing short-term memories into long-term ones, BBC TV reported.

Researchers, led by Daniele Piomelli of California University, have based their findings on an analysis of an experiment on rodents.

The team trained rats to complete two tasks — avoid an area that gave them a shock, and find a platform in a pool of water.

Immediately after the training, they injected some of the rats with oleoylethanolamide — a chemical produced in the small intestine of vertebrates which creates a sense of fullness after eating fat.

When the rats were retested one or two days later, the ones that received OEA performed better, suggesting they had stronger memories of their training.

More experiments with the rats showed OEA activates the same areas of the brain that mediate the formation of emotionally charged memories in humans, which are more vivid than typical memories.

“The findings make sense from an evolutionary perspective. When foraging animals find a fatty meal, they do well to remember exactly where and how they found it.

Since humans also produce OEA, there is a good chance that it boosts our memory too.

“OEA is only produced after eating a healthy unsaturated fat called oleic acid, so a cheeseburger after a night of cramming may not work — try food with olive oil or soybean oil,” Piomelli said.

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A US researcher at work developing a vaccine for the swine flu said Thursday he hopes to have it ready for testing in mice in two to three weeks.

Purdue University professor Suresh Mittal said the vaccine could be ready for production in a few months.

“We would like to have a vaccine in two to three weeks to start testing in mice,” said Mittal, a professor of comparative pathobiology in the School of Veterinary Medicine.

Mittal and collaborators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use a method he developed for dealing with the H5N1 bird flu to accelerate work on the H1N1 swine flu.

They will use a common cold virus to carry a gene of the H1N1 flu virus and stimulate cells to create both antibodies and cell-based protection that will guard against mutated forms of the flu virus.

“The adenovirus is incapable of replicating and does not seem to cause disease in humans,” Mittal said in a press release.

“That makes it a suitable virus to work with for flu vaccines.”

The vaccine Mittal created for the bird flu worked on three different strains isolated over a seven-year period and was described in papers for the Journal of Infectious Diseases and the journal Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

A number of different institutions, both private and public, are working on the development of a vaccine for swine flu.

The latest WHO figures show 2,371 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infections have been reported by 24 countries, not including Brazil and Argentina which reported their first cases later Thursday. Forty-six people have died; 44 of them in Mexico and two in the United States.

“If things go well, and we achieve full scale production, it will be several months until the vaccine will be available,” a spokesman for the CDC cautioned.

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