This is not a full/correct MySQL query only pseudo-code:
Select *
from Notifications as n
where n.date > (CurrentDate-10 days)
limit by 1
FOR UPDATE
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/select.html states: If you use FOR UPDATE with a storage engine that uses page or row locks, rows examined by the query are write-locked until the end of the current transaction
Is here only the one record returned locked by MySQL or all records it has to scan to find the single record?