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Individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviors often struggle with various mental health, social, family, and personal challenges. Existential anxiety or meaninglessness may contribute to these thoughts and behaviors. The current study aims to examine the impact of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy on reducing existential anxiety and the propensity for self-harming behaviors and suicidal ideations among students. The present study was quasi-experimental, and its research design was pre-test-post-test with a control group. The statistical population of the research consisted of the students of Hamedan Azad University in 2022. The convenience sampling method was used to select the sample. After the Self-Harm Inventory (1998), Lawrence Good's Preliminary Measure of Existential Anxiety (1974), and Beck's Scale-for-Suicidal-Ideation (1961) were implemented among the statistical population of the research. The essential data was collected and analyzed using SPSS-26 software. Sixteen individuals with scores above the cut-off point were chosen and randomly divided into two groups of eight people each: An intervention group and a control group. The intervention group was exposed to the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy group for eight sessions. Multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) was used to analyze the data. The results revealed that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy significantly reduced existential anxiety (P ≤ 0.001), self-harming tendencies (P ≤ 0.001), and suicidal ideations (P ≤ 0.001). The study's findings suggest that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is essential in reducing suicidal ideations, self-harm tendencies, and existential anxiety. As a result, it effectively promotes mental health and fosters community well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scorpions (Arachnida: Scorpions) are one of the medically important oldest arthropods. They have been one of the humans' interests in terms of special morphology, painful stings, mortality, and behavioral attractions for many years. Diagnosis of scorpions is based on morphological characteristics and molecular methods. But, one of the most important and fundamental problems of identifying the Iranian scorpions is the lack of a comprehensive method. Due to the fact that a relatively long time has not passed since the classification of scorpions in Iran and there are no definitive divisions about the genera and species in the country, the current pictorial key was provided to identify the Iranian scorpions. In this study, various methods were used to catch the scorpions. For preparing the pictorial key, different genera of scorpions were collected from urban, rural, plain, and mountain areas in different parts of Iran as well as some archived specimens from the medical arachnid's Museum of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences were used from 2010 to 2020 collection boxes. The key presented in this study was prepared only based on morphological features. It was necessary to remind a few points about this key and its use. Considering the above-mentioned points, this key was provided for 16 genera, 64 species, and 3 families of Iranian scorpions, and the results of other researchers are included in it. The study of various aspects of scorpion life, especially faunistic studies has been recently considered in Iran. Various methods such as molecular methods and composition of scorpion venom can be used for classification, the most common of which are morphological features that have a long history. Therefore, the need to provide a key to detect scorpions in the country has a special priority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder that significantly affects the quality of life of patients. In this study, we aim to evaluate the effectiveness of dental pulp stem cell (DPSC) transplantation in decreasing inflammation and cell death in brain cells, thus reducing seizure damage. We induced seizures in rats using intraperitoneal injections of pentylenetetrazole (PTZ). In the PTZ + DPSC group, we conducted bilateral hippocampal transplantation of DPSCs in PTZ-lesioned rat models. After 1 month, we performed post-graft analysis and measured some behavioral factors, such as working memory and long-term memory, using a T-maze test and passive avoidance test, respectively. We investigated the immunohistopathology and distribution of astrocyte cells through light microscopy and Sholl analysis. Additionally, we employed the Voronoi tessellation method to estimate the spatial distribution of the cells in the hippocampus. Compared to the control group, we observed a reduction in astrogliosis, astrocyte process length, the number of branches, and intersections distal to the soma in the hippocampus of the PTZ + DPSC group. Further analysis indicated that the grafted DPSCs decreased the expression of caspase-3 in the hippocampus of rats with induced seizures. Moreover, the DPSCs transplant protected hippocampal pyramidal neurons against PTZ toxicity and improved the spatial distribution of the hippocampal neurons. Our findings suggest that DPSCs transplant can be an effective modifier of astrocyte reactivation and inflammatory responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]