MOTIVATION AND LEARNING: A SURVEY STUDY IN PREPARATORY AND SECONDARY LEVELS IN QATARI SCHOOLS

Many studies have investigated the key role that motivation plays in student performance and academic achievement across different grade levels. Using survey methodology, this study aimed at determining student motivation by exploring the intersection of certain social and psycho-educational factors. The study, which involved preparatory (middle) and secondary (high) school students in Qatar, comprised a sample of 1803 male and female participants. A questionnaire instrument was employed to measure student motivation based on three main indicators: the effort students put in their studies, feeling bored at school, and absence from school. In analyzing the data, correlations were drawn between the three indicators, and gender and parent’s involvement in their child’s education. The results indicated that a significant number of both preparatory and secondary students exhibit low degrees of motivation. The results also revealed that students’ decreasing motivation is associated with their grade levels and that males reportedly displayed lower motivation compared to females. Male students’ motivation was also associated with parental involvement in their education. As such, the findings of this study support the results of previous research in the field. Qatar’s schools today are confronted with the same challenges that many schools in developed countries face. There is a real need for enhancing student motivation, and this is an essential element of quality education at all different grade levels. This will also aid in ensuring schools enable students to become effective role players in tomorrow’s schools

The role of the Notch pathway in healthy and osteoarthritic articular cartilage: from experimental models to ex vivo studies

Osteoarthritis is the most prevalent form of arthritis in the world. With the progressive ageing of the population, it is becoming a major public health problem. The involvement of certain signaling pathways, such as the Notch pathway, during cartilage pathology has been reported. In this review, we report on studies that investigated the expression pattern of the Notch family members in articular cartilage and the eventual involvement of this pathway in the modulation of the physiology and pathology of chondrocytes. Temporal and/or spatial modulation of this signaling pathway may help these cells to synthesize a new functional extracellular matrix and restore the functional properties of the articular cartilage

Impact of land use land cover changes on flow uncertainty in Siliana watershed of northwestern Tunisia

It is widely admitted that changes in land use land cover (LULC) influence the hydrology of the catchment. However, how these changes affect hydrological model prediction uncertainty is still a raising question. In this paper we addressed this question by investigating the impacts of the rapid change in LULC in the Siliana catchment in Tunisia on monthly flow and magnitude of flow extremes using the SWAT hydrological model while quantifying the contribution of LULC to the model parameter and prediction uncertainty. At a first step, the SWAT model parameter and prediction uncertainty were estimated using the GLUE method and acceptable parameter sets were identified. Subsequently, the SWAT model was fed with historical LULC as derived from Landsat 5 and 8 satellite images for the years 1990, 2000, 2013 and 2019, and run with the acceptable parameter sets. The results show that the increase in olive plantations (+380 %), urban area (+200 %), and irrigated lands (+309 %) from 1990 to 2019, has LULC decreased monthly flow, high flows magnitude but did not impact low flows in particular over the previous two decades. The findings also suggest that model prediction uncertainty can mask LULC effects, suggesting that model results can be misleading without explicit consideration of uncertainty when assessing the hydrological impacts of changes in LULC

Water resources management in the Medjerda basin (Tunisia): assessment of hydrological impacts of climatic change in the Siliana and Béja catchments

Under the current conditions, water resources in Tunisia are intensively exploited and mobilized to meet the increasing demands of all water users. While these resources are limited, approximately estimated to 4,5 Milliards of m3, more than 50% of the total volume of renewable water is withdrawn and mainly used for agricultural purposes (80%). With almost 11 Million of inhabitants, the average of the annual available water volume per person is about 470 m3 which is clearly below the threshold of water scarcity sets to 500 m3/inh/year. Furthermore, water resources are unevenly distributed within the country. About 56% of available waters are surface waters against 44% of groundwater including deep and shallow aquifers. In addition, more than 80% of surface water is mainly from the North, 12% from the center and 8% from the south. One of the most important watercourses in Tunisia is the Medjerda. This river basin covers an area about 23,700 km2 and extends from across the border in Algeria up to the Gulf of Utica (Fig. 1). About 32% of the basin falls within Algeria and 68% in Tunisia (16,100 km2)

Water resources management in the Medjerda basin (Tunisia): assessment of hydrological impacts of climatic change in the Siliana and Béja catchments

Under the current conditions, water resources in Tunisia are intensively exploited and mobilized to meet the increasing demands of all water users. While these resources are limited, approximately estimated to 4,5 Milliards of m3, more than 50% of the total volume of renewable water is withdrawn and mainly used for agricultural purposes (80%). With almost 11 Million of inhabitants, the average of the annual available water volume per person is about 470 m3 which is clearly below the threshold of water scarcity sets to 500 m3/inh/year. Furthermore, water resources are unevenly distributed within the country. About 56% of available waters are surface waters against 44% of groundwater including deep and shallow aquifers. In addition, more than 80% of surface water is mainly from the North, 12% from the center and 8% from the south. One of the most important watercourses in Tunisia is the Medjerda. This river basin covers an area about 23,700 km2 and extends from across the border in Algeria up to the Gulf of Utica (Fig. 1). About 32% of the basin falls within Algeria and 68% in Tunisia (16,100 km2)

Gestion des ressources en eau dans la Medjerda: Modélisation hydrologique

La Medjerda est le seul cours d’eau pérenne en Tunisie. Le bassin versant est le plus important de la Tunisie en termes de ressources hydriques et contribue à près de 25% de l’ensemble des ressources mobilisables du pays. La compréhension fine de l’hydrologie de ce bassin versant anthropisé, dans un milieu fortement perturbé par des aménagements dont les objectifs sont parfois antagonistes (conservation, production, mobilisation,…), couplé à la problématique des changements climatiques dont plusieurs scénarios plaident en faveur d’une baisse significative des précipitations associée à un accroissement des températures, indiquant des ressources hydriques moins importantes pour des besoins plus élevés, reste donc un pré-requis à sa gestion durable

Drought Regional Frequency Mapping in Tunisia

Meteorological droughts are among the most important natural hazards affecting large populations with significant consequences on the environment, economic and societal development, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions in the world. Both meteorological and hydrological droughts have been extensively studied using a variety of probabilistic models among which the Index Flood Regional Frequency Analysis based on an L-moments procedure (RFA-LM), appears to provide the most robust estimates of meteorological drought frequencies (Hosking et al., 1985a; J.H. Núñez et al. 2011). So far, applications of RFA-LM for regional drought probability studies have been restricted at regional and sub-regional scales while little work has been done at larger scales (e.g., national, continental, sub-continental). The application of the RFA-LM for assessing meteorological drought at larger scale is constrained by the availability of distributed precipitation network and good data quality, making the identification of homogeneous region, in term of common probability distribution, more complex, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions where large temporal and spatial disparity in rainfall distribution exists