Iraq is highly dependent on international markets to provide food for its residents. As imported food prices are highly dependent on crude oil prices in global markets, any shock in oil prices will have an impact on food consumption in the country. As a result, it is essential to study the demand for imported food at every time period. To the best of our knowledge as researchers, as not even a single study is available in the literature, this paper is considered the first to study the demand for imported food groups in Iraq. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to estimate demand elasticities for several imported food categories in Iraq. This study uses an Almost Ideal Demand System model to analyze the demand for imported f

The deterioration of buried sewers during their lifetime can be affected by several factors leading to bad performance and can damage the infrastructure similar to other engineering structures. The Hydraulic deterioration of the buried sewers caused by sewer blockages while the structural deterioration caused by sewer collapses due to sewer specifications and the surrounding soil characteristics and the groundwater level. The main objective of this research is to develop deterioration models, which are used to predict changes in sewer condition that can provide assessment tools for determining the serviceability of sewer networks in Baghdad city. Two deterioration models were developed and tested using statistical software SPSS, the

The aim of this research is to assess the validity of Detailed Micro-Modeling (DMM) as a numerical model for masonry analysis. To achieve this aim, a set of load-displacement curves obtained based on both numerical simulation and experimental results of clay masonry prisms loaded by a vertical load. The finite element method was implemented in DMM for analysis of the experimental clay masonry prism. The finite element software ABAQUS with implicit solver was used to model and analyze the clay masonry prism subjected to a vertical load. The load-displacement relationship of numerical model was found in good agreement with those drawn from experimental results. Evidence shows that load-displacement curvefound from the finite element m

The Sequencing Batch Reactor system (SBR) is a major component of the municipal wastewater biological treatment system and water reclamation that provides high-quality water that could be reused in restricted plants that which require large quantities of water despite the lack of water. The research aims to investigate the performance of a pilot plant SBR unit under real operation conditions that was installed and operated in Al-Rustamiya Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), Baghdad, Iraq. Results showed that the BOD5/COD ratio of the raw wastewater was within the average value at 0.66 emphasizing the organic nature of the influent flow and hence the amenability to biological treatment. The results also ensured that the treatment pro

Two dimensional meso-scale concrete modeling was used in finite element analysis of plain concrete beam subjected to bending. The plane stress 4-noded quadrilateral elements were utilized to model coarse aggregate, cement mortar. The effect of aggregate fraction distribution, and pores percent of the total area – resulting from air voids entrapped in concrete during placement on the behavior of plain concrete beam in flexural was detected. Aggregate size fractions were randomly distributed across the profile area of the beam. Extended Finite Element Method (XFEM) was employed to treat the discontinuities problems result from double phases of concrete and cracking that faced during the finite element analysis of concrete beam. Crac

Bootstrap is one of an important re-sampling technique which has given the attention of  researches recently. The presence of outliers in the original data set may cause serious problem to the classical bootstrap when the percentage of outliers are higher than the original one. Many methods are proposed to overcome this problem such  Dynamic Robust Bootstrap for LTS (DRBLTS) and Weighted Bootstrap with Probability (WBP). This paper try to show the accuracy of parameters estimation by comparison the results of both methods. The bias , MSE and RMSE are considered. The criterion of the accuracy is based on the RMSE value since the method that provide us RMSE value smaller than other is con

This research includes the study of dual data models with mixed random parameters, which contain two types of parameters, the first is random and the other is fixed. For the random parameter, it is obtained as a result of differences in the marginal tendencies of the cross sections, and for the fixed parameter, it is obtained as a result of differences in fixed limits, and random errors for each section. Accidental bearing the characteristic of heterogeneity of variance in addition to the presence of serial correlation of the first degree, and the main objective in this research is the use of efficient methods commensurate with the paired data in the case of small samples, and to achieve this goal, the feasible general least squa