A bio-economic model for calculating sire NET PRESENT VALUEs (NPVs) was provided, by accounting for economic coefficients and transmitting abilities for milk yield and milk fat percentage. For this purpose data were used on costs and returns of a dairy herd with 1200 cows, and also on results of geNETic evaluation of a random sample of sires which have been used for artificial insemination. The sensitivity of NPVs to price change of concentrate, forage, milk and milk fat were investigated. By doubling these prices, the mean NPVs were increased by 0.99%, 0.64%, 96% and 8.1% respectively. The change of prices resulted in change of correlation coefficients of new NPVs and base NPVs. The highest and the lowest correlations were related to feed price change, by 99.99%, and to milk price change, by 99.93%, respectively. The effect of feed price on the NPVs was not significant (p>0.05) and of milk and milk fat prices were highly significant (p<0.001). Because of sensetivity of NPV to factors of production system, it is not possible to rank the sires for a specific situation and then generalize them to others. There was less than 100% correlation between NPVs and milk and milk fat transmitting abilities, thus they can not been used as an alternative to NPVs in sire selection.

In this study, Robust NET PRESENT VALUE (RNPV) has been developed for evaluation of projects with infinite life. In this method, the changes of uncertain NET incomes in a financial cash flow are postulated in a convex, continuous, and closed region. It has been indicated that RNPV, in the infinite life horizon, is calculable only when the NET incomes are uncorrelated. Compared to traditional methods, this study considers the variance matrix of NET incomes, takes uncertainty into account during the evaluation of investment projects with infinite life period. One important finding when using this method is that one does not need to calculate the covariance matrix in the evaluation of projects with infinite life. The only requirement is to estimate the VALUE of maximum variance for the given financial cash flow. The proposed method is also easy to both calculate and understand in practice. MATLAB software is used for implementation. Lastly, the features of the developed method have been analyzed using some numerical examples for a project with infinite lifetime.

The aim of this study is to PRESENT an efficient solving method for the project portfolio selection problem. The objective is to maximize the NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV) of the project portfolio. The problem is first modeled mathematically. Then, two meta heuristics, the geNETic algorithm and simulated annealing, are applied to solve this NP-hard problem. Finally, a comprehensive computational experiment is performed on a set of instances. The results of the computational experiment show that the geNETic algorithm performs better than the simulated annealing algorithm.

Increasing carbon storage in forests is the goal of sustainable management, in recent years, it has been recognized as one of the important tools in mitigating the impact of climate change. Carbon trading is one of the market-based tools as a cost-effective and convenient way to climate change and environmental issues. The aim of this study is to determine the economic VALUE of carbon in poplar plantation. Carbon content was measured in the plantation of Populus deltoides and adjusted carbon price was determined using the non-stationary regression model. NET PRESENT VALUE of carbon was calculated and finally sensitivity analysis of price and carbon interest rate were performed. Results show the plantation stock was 180. 2 m3/ha (57. 6 t/ha) and carbon content was 32. 2 t/ha at age 36 years. NET PRESENT VALUE calculated at different ages and the sensitivity analysis showed that the NET PRESENT VALUE increased with increasing price and interest rate.

In this paper, a two-echelon supplier-manufacturer system has been studied through NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV) approach. The production rate is finite and constant in both echelons. Also it is assumed that there is a lead-time between the first echelon and it is getting to the second echelon. It is also assumed that the lot-size of manufacturer (second echelon) is m times larger than the supplier’s factors (first echelon), and the supplier can receive wares (the raw material) from the manufacturer in a cycle through several shipments, due to the point that shortage is not allowed. So, it is supposed that the supplier’s production rate is greater than manufacturer’s. The aim is to determine the optimal lot-size of each echelon such that the NPV of the total cost of system is minimized. After approximating the NPV objective function via Maclaurin expansion in both zero and non-zero lead-time cases, an exact algorithm is PRESENTed to find optimal solution of the PRESENTed model. Based on the results, the two approaches of average cost and NPV do not lead to a same result, and non-equivalency is occurred in this case.

Sustainable development is an essential goal for developing countries, which can be measured by various indices. This paper computes genuine saving for the Iranian economy based on national accounting and examines the relationship between genuine saving and PRESENT VALUE of discounted consumption during 1960-2012. The results indicate that genuine saving is mostly negative over the period under study and there is also a negative relationship between genuine saving (as a measure for the nation wealth) and the change in the PRESENT VALUE of consumption (as a national welfare index). According to Hartwick’ s rule, these findings mean that welfare reduction is a possible outcome in the future.

Summary: Mining production planning is a very vital subject of mine design process. One of the most important issues in mine production planning is the cutoff grade which is simply a grade used to distinguish between ore and waste. Waste materials may either be left in place or sent to waste dump. Ore is sent to the mill for further processing. Lower cutoff grade causes higher amounts of ore to be processed and subsequently lower amounts of waste materials to be dumped resulted in fluctuations in the cash flow of a mining project. The main goal of the long-term production planning is to determine strategies to implement the cutoff grade and short-term production planning. One of the most important aspects of mine design is to determine the optimum cutoff grade. The optimum cutoff grade leads to maximize the profit or the NET PRESENT VALUE (NPV). Maximizing of NPV is a non-liner programing problem that has been considered in the recent decades. The main factors involved in the Lane algorithm are the capacities of each part of the mine (e.g. extraction capacity of mine, refinery plant, and market), time VALUE of currency and distribution grad of deposit. Since Lane algorithm calculation steps are very time consuming, In this study a novel technique namely Imperialism Competitive Algorithm (ICA) is used to determine the optimum cut-off grade. The results show that optimum cut-off grade obtained by ICA is more accurate and faster than other simulation algorithms. In this paper a novel optimization algorithm based on imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) is used to determine the optimum cut-off grade in the open-pit mines.Introduction: One of the important aspects of open-pit mine design is determination of cutoff grade, by definition cutoff grade is the grade at which the mineral reserve ca no longer be mined and processed at profit. A cutoff grade is used to assign the destination of material exploited from the mine. This destinations are: (1) to mill, (2) to the waste dump and (3) to the stockpiles. In this paper, determining the optimal cutoff grade of ore to maximize the NPV due to mining limitations, concentration and refining is described by using ICA algorithm.Methodology and Approaches: The ICA algorithm starts with an initial population. Each population in ICA is called country. Countries are divided in two groups: imperialists and colonies. In this algorithm the more powerful imperialist, have the more colonies. When the competition starts, imperialists attempt to achieve more colonies and the colonies start to move toward their imperialists. So during the competition the powerful imperialists will be improved and the weak ones will be collapsed. At the end just one imperialist will remain. In this stage the position of imperialist and its colonies will be the same. In this paper the cutoff grade of hypothetical deposit is calculated using ICA algorithm. This algorithm has 40 country, 6 imperialist and 34 colony. Finally the results is validated by dichotomous method.Results and Conclusions: One of the important parameters of open-pit mine design is determination of cutoff grade. In this paper imperialist competitive algorithm is used to optimize the cutoff grade. Since the roulette wheel mechanism is not used In the ICA algorithm and only a probability density function (PDF) is needed to reach the answer, the ICA algorithm converges faster and better to the optimum point compare with other algorithms.