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Existing literature indicates that academic staff experience increasing levels of work stress. This study investigated associations between day-to-day threat and challenge appraisal and day-to-day problem-focused coping, emotion-focused coping, and seeking social support among academic office workers. This study is based on an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) design with a 15-working day data collection period utilising our self-developed STRAW smartphone application. A total of 55 office workers from academic institutions in Belgium (n = 29) and Slovenia (n = 26) were included and 3665 item measurements were analysed. Participants were asked approximately every 90 min about their appraisal of stressful events (experienced during the working day) and their coping styles. For data analysis, we used an unstructured covariance matrix in our linear mixed models. Challenge appraisal predicted problem-focused coping and threat appraisal predicted emotion-focused coping. Our findings suggest an association between threat appraisal as well as challenge appraisal and seeking social support. Younger and female workers chose social support more often as a coping style. While working from home, participants were less likely to seek social support. The findings of our EMA study confirm previous research on the relationship between stress appraisal and coping with stress. Participants reported seeking social support less while working from home compared to working at the office, making the work location an aspect that deserves further research., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

The effect of addition of jams, marmalades, starches and milk products on the adsorptive capacity of activated charcoal for acetylsalicyclic acid was determined in vitro. The addition of these products to an aqueous suspension of activated charcoal decreased the adsorption of acetylsalicylic acid from 98% to 95% or 90% (jams and marmalades) or to 80% (milk). Starches had no effect. It appears that the use of jams to make ingestion of activated charcoal easier is acceptable.

The rheological properties of several commercial topical fluoride gels were studied. For that purpose, we investigated hysteresis loops under standard conditions, equilibrium values, apparent viscosities as a function of shear rate, rate of thixotropic recovery, and the influence of temperature. The rheological equilibrium values, treated by the Power Law and the Cross Equation, show very important differences. Five gels show pseudoplastic behavior; seven have thixotropic properties. For the risks of fluoride gel toxicity to be lowered, high pseudoplasticity seems most desirable for the first group; for the thixotropic gels, a combination of yield value (very high viscosity at rest), the presence of a static yield value (very fast decrease in viscosity at very low shear rates), and both fast and high thixotropic recovery after destruction seems ideal. Positive and negative, as well as practically no, influence on rheological properties can be noted when the temperature changes.