Six meteorological drought indices including percent of normal (PN), standardized precipitation index (SPI), China-Z index (CZI), modified CZI (MCZI), Z-Score (Z), the aridity index of E. de Martonne (I) are compared and evaluated for assessing spatio-temporal dynamics of droughts in six climatic regions in Iran. Results indicated that by consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the...

OBJECTIVES The management of Parkinson's disease (PD) has been improved, but management of signs like swallowing problems is still challenging. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) alleviates the cardinal motor symptoms and improves quality of life, but its effect on swallowing is not fully explored. The purpose of this study was to examine self-reported swallowing-specific quality of life before and a...

drought detecting is a necessary aspect of drought risk management. it is generally performed usingdifferent drought indices that are effectively continuous functions of rainfall and other hydro- meteorologicalvariables. a number of drought indices have been introduced and used in various countries to date. in thecurrent research, four meteorological drought indices including the standardized p...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the present study was to examine whether there was a negative effect of caudal Zona Incerta deep brain stimulation (cZI DBS) on pharyngeal swallowing function in Parkinson's patients (PD). There are no former reports including swallowing and cZI DBS. METHODS Eight patients (aged 49-71 years; median 62) were evaluated pre- and post-operatively, at 6 and 12 months after...

A number of different approaches have been utilized in recent years for the treatment of Parkinson's disease with varying effects on associated communication disorders. In particular, the drug treatments based on levodopa therapy and, more recently, deep brain stimulation of the sub-thalamic nucleus (STN-DBS) have yielded variable effects on the speech disorders exhibited by the majority of per...