“…Studies on hydrophobically-associating water-soluble polymers have been, so far, mainly performed on the modification of maleic anhydride [1] or polyacrylic acid under various hydrophilic forms [2,3,4] (sodium acrylate, N-isopropyl acrylamide, etc.) as well as, to a lesser extent, on hydrophobic derivatives of certain polysaccharides [5,6,7] (hydroxyethyl cellulose, pullulan, etc.…”