A case of paranoid psychosis in myxoedema is described. Though depression is commonly encountered in myxoedema, the disorder can also manifest itself with schizophrenic features; this can lead to problems in diagnosis and management.
Earthworm specimens collected from various parts of Thailand were found to contain seven new species of the genus Metaphire Sims & Easton, 1972. These are M. songkhlaensis sp. n. in the octothecal pulauensis species group, M. trangensis sp. n. in the octothecal ignobilis species group, M. khaoluangensis sp. n. and M. khaochamao sp. n. in the sexthecal houlleti species group, M. doiphamon sp. n. in the sexthecal peguana species group, M. saxicalcis sp. n. in the quadrithecal planata species group, and the bithecal M. surinensis sp. n. Type material of some established species from Thailand or northern Malaysia was reinvestigated and illustrated to confirm the status of the new species and to facilitate species comparisons: M. pulauensis (Beddard, 1900), M. baruana (Stephenson, 1932), both with newly designated lectotypes, and M. planata (Gates, 1936), illustrated and redescribed.
Macromolecules that possess three-dimensional, branched molecular structures are of great interest because they exhibit significantly differentiated application performance compared to conventional linear (straight chain) polymers. This paper reports the synthesis of 3- and 4-arm star branched polymers via ring opening polymerisation (ROP) utilising multi-functional hydroxyl initiators and Sn(Oct)2 as precatalyst. The structures produced include mono-functional hydrophobic and multi-functional amphiphilic core corona stars. The characteristics of the synthetic process were shown to be principally dependent upon the physical/dielectric properties of the initiators used. ROP's using initiators that were more available to become directly involved with the Sn(Oct)₂ in the "in-situ" formation of the true catalytic species were observed to require shorter reaction times. Use of microwave heating (MWH) in homopolymer star synthesis reduced reaction times compared to conventional heating (CH) equivalents, this was attributed to an increased rate of "in-situ" catalyst formation. However, in amphiphilic core corona star formation, the MWH polymerisations exhibited slower propagation rates than CH equivalents. This was attributed to macro-structuring within the reaction medium, which reduced the potential for reaction. It was concluded that CH experiments were less affected by this macro-structuring because it was disrupted by the thermal currents/gradients caused by the conductive/convective heating mechanisms. These gradients are much reduced/absent with MWH because it selectively heats specific species simultaneously throughout the entire volume of the reaction medium. These partitioning problems were overcome by introducing additional quantities of the species that had been determined to selectively heat.