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User:Sam Francis/The Euro

''The following is a report I wrote in 2001 for my economics a-level. I'm posting it here in the hope that it might help improve wikipedia. Most of it is fairly NPOV, although some of it is written from the first person. There were a few graphs that are referred to in the text, and I can reproduce those if anyone thinks they would be useful; just comment on the talk page. (In the article, "we" refers to the UK. Also, note that my views have probably changed since this was written.)''

This may help with articles such as Euro, European Union, Single European Market, perhaps some of the economics articles.

Should the UK join the Euro?
The Euro, the single currency currently in use by twelve of the fifteen member states of the European Union, is the prime feature of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which can be identified as the fifth stage of economic integration (of which there are six stages). The currency is to come into physical form on the 1st of January 2002. The United Kingdom is currently one of three EU states not participating in EMU. This question is therefore very topical; whether the UK joins the Euro or not will be an important decision and will have a profound effect on the country economically.

To answer this question, I intend to look at the economic situation of participating EU states (known as "the Eurozone") as one body, and that of the UK, to see if EMU would work as it is intended, whether it would benefit the UK economy, and whether or not it would be better for the UK to join or not, from various viewpoints including stability and trade. I will also investigate how the UK economy would react and be affected by joining or staying out of the Euro, and assess the economic benefits and disadvantages. I will discuss the implications of joining, such as the centralisation of interest rate decisions, and finally evaluate whether or not it would be in the best interests of the UK, from an economic point of view, to participate in EMU with the twelve other European countries involved.

Economic concepts & theories
The following economic concepts and theories will be very important to my investigation:

Inflation (a sustained increase in the general price level).
The introduction of the Euro itself may cause inflation, and inflation, as a measure of economic performance, is a useful indicator on convergence.

Monetary Policy (a method of managing the economy mainly utilising interest rates to control inflation)
If the UK joins the Euro, monetary policy decisions would no longer be made by the Monetary Policy committee (MPC), but would be handed over to the European Central Bank (ECB). This centralisation of monetary policy (‘one size fits all’) is a possible source of economic problems stemming from regional differences.

Unemployment (the proportion of the population not in work)
EMU itself may cause some unemployment as markets adjust to the new competitive conditions. Also, significant variations in patterns of unemployment would suggest that the economies are at different points in their trade cycles, which has implications for EMU.

Exchange Rate Risk (the risk for firms when dealing with more than one currency)
This will be eliminated for trade within the EU, and so firms and consumers will be able to truly find the lowest price available in the EU (due to price transparency), and so exploit fully the benefits of the single market.

Theory of Comparative Advantage (the theory that total output will be increased if each country concentrates on producing what it is relatively best at)
The advantages of this theory may be more fully exploited with EMU, as trade within the Euro-zone increases.

Arguments for joining
The primary arguments for joining can be summarised as follows:
 * There would be less trade barriers with other Eurozone countries, which already make up the majority of export markets. This should have a deflationary effect and benefit economic growth.
 * The UK would benefit from increased competitiveness from the positive results of competition (namely, efficiency).
 * The UK would have more of a say in what happens politically and economically in its most important export markets.
 * With the benefits of trade and the SEM more fully exploited, the UK will see great economic benefits from EMU, particularly economies of scale.

Arguments for staying out
There are arguments in favour of staying out of the Euro. The main ones are:
 * The single currency will cause instability while economies adjust. For example, the exchange rate will fluctuate (since its creation, the Euro has fallen to about 60-70% of its original value against the dollar) and the introduction of notes and coins will cause disruptions.
 * Once in, we will be locked in, and we cannot get out of the single currency: there’s no turning back. So, if the currency fails and becomes unworkable for whatever reason, or causes problems like inflation, we will not be able to leave it, and will have to suffer the consequences in whatever form they might be (unemployment and recession, for example).
 * Political arguments, such as fears that the Euro is a step towards undesirable political union with the EU states, are abundant on this issue.

Monetary Policy - Interest Rates
The Bank Of England currently controls interest rate decisions in the UK. If the UK joins EMU, these powers would be given to the ECB, which already controls bank base rates in the twelve Euro-zone countries. The question is whether or not this is a good thing for the UK economy.

The argument for giving up these powers is that, although it may happen at times that the UK economy is out of step with the rest of the Euro-zone and so may require different interest rates, this can be compensated for using other methods of controlling inflation and the economy. On entering into the Euro, the government will be giving up two of the four methods available to it for controlling the economy - monetary and exchange rate policy. The two remaining tools left to the government are therefore price and incomes policy, which involves placing legal controls on price and income changes, and fiscal policy.

Fiscal Policy
Fiscal policy involves using the ‘levers’ tax, government spending and borrowing to manipulate aggregate demand. For example, by cutting taxes, a government hopes to encourage spending to bring the economy out of recession.

However, there are problems with using fiscal measures. First of all, the extent to which any EU government can alter taxes is restricted because of harmonisation - a philosophy followed by the EU to achieve the Single European Market, making each country as desirable as any other for consumers and firms in terms of taxes. For example, changes to value added tax (VAT) are restricted. Also, it is politically difficult for the present Labour government to increase taxes because of the electoral promises they made.

The argument against fiscal measures is a historical and political one; in the past, governments used fiscal measures to a much greater extent, but found that fiscal measures - particularly government spending - although politically popular at times, did nothing but fuel inflationary pressures in the economy and cut or boost aggregate demand temporarily. The abandonment of fiscal policy as a primary measure came in the mid-1970s, following the disastrous boom of 1972-3, which ending with the oil crisis of 1973 and world recession in the following years. Jim Callaghan, Prime Minister in 1976, told a Labour party conference, "We used to think you could just spend your way out of a recession...that option no longer exists, and that in so far as it ever did exist, it worked by injecting inflation into the economy."

Price and incomes policies
Price and incomes policies are also now looked upon as undesirable - especially as they conflict with monetarist and free trade philosophies. These measures are likely to make the UK a less attractive location for foreign investment, and so would not be desirable in the free market situation that the world at large - particularly the biggest economies of the world, and the World Trade Organisation - is pushing for. The EU in particular is one of the most successful symbol of this ideology, as economic integration has led to increases in trade between EU nations. In this increasingly free single market, the UK economy has to stay competitive, and government restrictions and intervention is not likely to help this.

The largest single market in the world - the US The United States of America, with a GDP of £6127 billion, has a single currency: the dollar and so there is just one interest rate in the US, set by the central bank in Washington. The huge US economy thrives with this one rate. However, where interest rate policy would be used, instead the US has movements of labour and finances (through taxes and spending). Although the EU does have some similar arrangements in financial transfers - called Regional Development Funds - there are major differences in the US and EU labour market. Labour in Europe is immobile compared with the US. This immobility, something which the SEM was aimed to combat, is caused by cultural and language barriers.

All of these arguments over the "one size fits all" interest rate are, however, based on whether or not the UK economy is out of step with those of the Euro-zone. If this is not the case, then one interest rate across Europe would have no ill effects, and would make the SEM more competitive, as the economies would be on a level playing field, as it were.

Convergence with the Euro-zone economies
It is important that the UK economy is in-step with that of the Eurozone, particularly because of the centralisation of interest rate decisions outlined above. To find out whether or not this is the case, I will look at various economic indicators for the UK and Eurozone (mainly) and see whether or not there is any correlation in the patterns that they follow.

To join the Euro, it is preferable that the UK economy is at a similar point in the trade cycle to the Euro-zone, particularly if the "one size fits all" policy of the ECB is to be effective in keeping the economies of the Euro-zone from overheating with inflationary pleasures. Figure 1 therefore shows a comparison of three rates of inflation; the Euro-zone average, the EU (as fifteen countries, hence "EU-15"), and the UK rate. The first two are measured in the "Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices", which is designed for international comparisons of consumer price inflation.

This graph shows that although fairly in line in the last quarter or so of 2000, since February 2001 the UK rate has followed a different pattern to the rest of the EU. The UK rate has dropped significantly in the first half of 2001 but has otherwise been following the same pattern to the EU average, if at a lower level. It is interesting that the Euro-zone has been experiencing consistently slightly higher rates than the EU as a whole. This suggests that the three countries that have stayed out of the single currency to date (Denmark, Sweden and the UK) have been experiencing lower levels of inflation in general. However, more detailed data would be needed to draw reliable conclusions from such a suggestion, and I will investigate this later.

The data shows that the UK inflation rate is not completely in line with the EU or Euro-zone averages. However, the UK’s rate is, and has been for some time, at a similar level to the EU and Euro-zone averages, and does follow a broadly similar pattern, even if it has deviated from the average in recent months. UK inflation has been relatively stable over the past few years - perhaps due to the success of the independent Monetary Policy Committee - as the German inflation rate has historically been.

Joining and inflation
According to figure 1, there seems to be no great upward trend in the Euro-zone. This is perhaps an indicator of what the Euro would do to inflation upon joining the Euro. A survey by the accountants KPMG showed that "within a year of its launch, 40% of Euroland firms had cut prices because of the single currency."

Price transparency, the idea that it will be easier to compare prices across the Euro-zone because of the single currency, suggests that EMU would have a deflationary effect in the short term, as firms adjust their prices in a more competitive environment. The benefits of this to Britain will be large, because British prices are already quite high, hence the term "Rip-Off Britain". The use of the internet by consumers - and perhaps more importantly, by businesses - to find the lowest price will further price transparency, increasing knowledge in the market and so making it more competitive.

The fact that the EU-15 rate is lower than that of the Euro-zone shows that non-Euro countries have had lower rates of inflation on average, as mentioned above. This is, however, far from conclusive evidence that the Euro is bad for an economy. There are a number of reasons why this difference could exist:
 * The Euro-zone could be experiencing inflationary pressures because of the changing nature of monetary and financial systems, due to the anticipated introduction of the Euro as physical currency (in January 2002) and possibly also the introduction of the Euro as electronic currency. There is a strong argument that these pressures will subside.
 * One or more countries could be not suited to the Euro, or simply experiencing economic difficulties, and so dragging the Euro-zone average up.

As the date of the introduction of physical currency approaches, businesses in the Euro-zone will be spending increased amounts in preparation for the changeover, especially large retail outlets and financial organisations who will have to deal with the Euro on a particularly large scale, as they have to have a lot of working capital. There are so many spending implications for the changeover of currency: in training of staff who have to deal with it, public information by governments wishing to inform their citizens about the new currency and the changeover, replacement and upgrade of machinery that deals with physical currency, the list is seemingly endless. All these, then, will contribute to inflationary pressures in the Eurozone, and are likely to drag the Eurozone inflation rate up above that of the EU-15.

However, there is a counter-argument to this. Because the ECB sets interest rates for the whole of the Euro-zone - discussed earlier - and the whole Euro-zone will probably experience the same level of inflationary pressures from the introduction of Euro notes and coins, interest rates in the Euro-zone should have compensated for this. It is possible that they have, and that inflation would be much higher had they not. This argument is a worry for Britain joining, as it may mean that if we do, the introduction of physical currency and related inflationary pressures will be at a different date to that of the rest of the Euro-zone, so the UK economy would be put in danger of overheating without monetary policy measures available to the government.

It is also possible that these inflationary pressures have simply offset the effects of the US recession by sustaining business and government spending and investment.

Gross Domestic Product: Economic Growth
The change in GDP is a useful measure to show whether or not economies are growing at similar rates, and we can use it to determine whether or not economies are at similar points in the trade cycle.

Figure 2 shows that the UK’s rate of growth has been roughly in line with that of the EU as a whole and the Eurozone. It also shows Luxembourg and Ireland’s growth rates, which are the highest in the Eurozone. It is interesting that both of the latter follow the same pattern, although at different levels. This suggests that, although they have high growth rates, these are changing at similar rates to each other and to the UK and the rest of Europe. This is good evidence that the European economies are roughly in step: especially the close correlation of the UK and European patterns.

And why shouldn’t this be so? The UK is still, after all, a member of the Single European Market, and in theory trade barriers are steadily being removed to make for a freer market. This makes trade with the EU generally a more attractive option than trade outside the EU.

Figure 3, below, shows economic growth over a longer period. This also shows a UK correlation with the EU, as well as with the US. This is significant, as it shows that, over the longer term, economic growth in the EU and US are very much in line. This is important because, even if the UK’s trade cycle is in line with the US’, as the argument goes, it is also in line with the EU’s: the three correlate. Even the Japanese growth rate, which differs immensely from the others, still follows a similar pattern of ups and downs (until very recently).

Inflation and Economic Growth
The above proves that the economies of the UK and Eurozone are fairly in synch, even though there are regional differences, such as the difference in growth rates between Ireland and the EU average.

Benefits from the Single Market
The European Commission estimates (in the Cecchini report) that the EU has gained in 4.3-6.4% of its GDP from the single market, due to gains from increased competition, removing barriers and exploiting economies of scale. Assuming this is an accurate figure, this would imply that similar benefits would arise from the single currency, as it opens the market further, and will have similar effects on trade barriers and competition.

However, opening markets in this way tends to have some adverse effects in the short run. Unemployment is an example of this: where markets are opened up and competition increased, some firms, the least competitive, will be forced to close, causing unemployment as the economies adjust to new competitive conditions. Further down the line, though, it is likely that this will be offset by increased economic growth which will in turn increase employment.

Trade
One common argument against this synchronisation is that the UK’s economy is closer to that of the USA, because the USA and UK are major trading partners - US investment in the UK is double that of its investment in all of the other EU countries put together. However, as figure 4 clearly shows that although the USA is one of the countries with which we trade the most, exports to the EU make up the vast majority, making the EU as a whole our most prominent trading partner.

There are many reasons for the EU being our main trading partner. Two of the most important are: Both help to make goods cheaper (reduced transport costs; less trade barriers) and so increase the likeliness of trade with the EU states.
 * Geographic proximity
 * The single market.

The single currency makes it easier for countries to trade with each other, for a number of reasons:
 * 1) There are no problems with exchange rates; such as exchange rate risk for businesses.
 * 2) Financial documents and communications used in internal Eurozone trade will be more simplified, with only one currency to worry about, making trade easier and quicker.
 * 3) Prices across the EU will be transparent; i.e. consumers can evaluate what the price of a product is without having to calculate the exchange rate.

These serve to lower production costs, which will have two effects:
 * Deflationary effect. Lower producer prices will lead to lower consumer prices.
 * Increased international competitiveness.

Also, consumers will see less costs in changing money when they move between countries. This could help labour to be more mobile, and will increase consumer confidence in buying between Eurozone countries, especially using methods like the Internet, so encouraging spending. Price transparency will also be a benefit to UK consumers, furthering these factors.

Long Term Benefits of Trade
The theory of comparative advantage states that total output will increase if countries focus production on what they are relatively best at, hence implying that a country’s specialisation is desirable if the aim is to increase total output. This theory is generally accepted, so countries specialise in various areas according to their advantages. Therefore, countries tend to need to trade with other countries for goods that they produce cheaper.

If total output is increased, as it will be in a free market where trade is easier (according to the theory of comparative advantage), it can be assumed that this will generally lead to greater economic welfare, as more goods are produced, and so people have more of their needs better fulfilled. Also, the cost of living should decrease because of lower prices rooted in benefits like economies of scale and increased efficiency from competition which are brought by freer and larger markets, such as the Single European Market (SEM). Not only will welfare be increased, but an increase in total output implies economic growth. With the level of integration in the EU, this will most likely effect both parties positively.

The Greater Benefits
The EU has a pot of money which the various states contribute towards and are given what is deemed necessary. The UK, for one, contributes more than it gets back from this pot. The philosophy behind this kind of aid is not just concerned with the welfare of the various EU economies. By helping other countries (our trading partners) economically, countries benefit from greater consumer markets. This is an application of the Darwinian idea of "mutual aid", ie. cooperation. This will help each country, and is an example of where investment can be more effective from one country to another. For example, the multiplier effect of, say, an infrastructure investment like improving roads will have a greater effect in a poorer EU economy like Portugal than the same amount would have in the UK. We have seen that the UK loses money directly to the EU, but in helping our trading partners economically, we are increasing the markets available to our companies and suppliers available to our consumers and so the benefits are coming back to us.

The same is true of pulling down barriers to trade. Whether the increased trade benefits the UK or other EU countries more is irrelevant; both parties will benefit indefinitely from increases in economic growth and welfare, and the EU would support any economy that is initially disadvantaged through its spending.

The idea illustrated is that by helping other economies (particularly as those economies are some of our most significant trading partners), we will help ourselves by effectively increasing the size of our own markets in terms of consumer spending power and disposable income.

Kenneth Clarke
As an ex-chancellor, Kenneth Clarke speaks with some authority as a free market economist. In a speech to economics students in London recently, outlined why the Euro was desirable when the economic conditions were right for the UK to join. The points he made were that the single currency is based on the same principle the single market (I have already briefly discussed the benefits of this) and so is an obvious and planned extension of this move. He also said that the UK economy was fairly convergent with that of the other big European economies - Germany and France. Low and stable inflation rates are something we share with these countries. The fluctuations of the pound against other European currencies - which would be elimanted with the Euro - are damaging to trade and investment, and eradicating them would be to the advantage of the UK economy.

The ‘left wing’ view
Left wing economists and politicians, such as the ex-Labour MP Tony Benn, are not advocates of free market economics in general. Their argument is that in the free market system that is being created, corporations become hugely powerful, and Tony Benn called this corporate power a "threat to democracy", pointing to the fact that Ford - the car manufacturer - are in fact larger than South Africa in terms of budget, and Toyota larger than Norway.

The single market in Europe, and the single currency as an extension of this, is very much a free market idea, and is partially based on the model of the United States as a successful economy. Tony Benn, for one, challenges this model by pointing out that in the US, 40 million adults have no provision for healthcare. Cuba, a socialist command economy and neighbour to America, in contrast, has universal healthcare. Generally, then, left wing economists oppose the opening of markets advocated by free market economies, largely on the grounds that it leads to the easier exploitation of people by powerful corporations. Although this, as an argument against free market economics, is not directly applicable to the Euro, the EMU, like the SEM, is built on a free market philosophy, and so is in ideological conflict with the left wing view.

Also, many left wing economists advocate decentralising political (and economic) power, and putting decisions into the hands of the people it effects. Centralising decisions in the SEM in general, and with the interest rates and the ECB in particular, is therefore very much contradictory to that, and a single currency leads to centralisation of economic decisions.

Validity of data
While making selections from the huge amount of data available, I had to make sensible choices about which data was relevant and valid. The potential problem with this is bias; each source may have some element of bias, which can usually be offset by using a variety of sources. I used a relatively small variety; and a lot of the data, that could be relied upon to be fairly accurate, came from a small range of sources, such as Eurostat and the OECD, which have a small potential for political bias. On the other hand, for purposes of historical comparison, getting data from one source will help, as you can be fairly certain the data was collected in the same way over the time period, making comparisons over time more valid.

The following conclusion is based on the arguments and findings from the rest of this report. There are a number of problems that could arise from this:
 * Personal bias. I, as the sole author of this report, have made all the selections of data and findings contained in it, and so there is a possibility that the report as a whole could be bias towards, for example, my political views. I have tried to keep this to a minimum, however, by using my critical faculties to remain as objective as possible and see the arguments from both sides.
 * Assumptions. Economists have to make a wide range of assumptions, usually to facilitate economic models. There is always the danger that, in reality, these assumptions may be widely inaccurate, resulting in inaccuracies in models and the arguments that arise from them. It is intellectually healthy to challenge these assumptions, and ensure they are justified and have some bearing on reality. Arguments that are based on many assumptions will be less valid than those that aren’t, and it is the same for economic models.

Conclusion
In the long run, EMU will bring great economic benefits to the UK. In the short term, there may be problems arising from the introduction of the Euro, especially in the transition period, when both the Euro and Pound Sterling would exist in physical currency at the same time. However, these problems will be temporary, and should hopefully pass by without any great long term effect. Also, we will be able to observe the coming transition in the Eurozone because of our late entry, and so learn from the Eurozone states’ experiences.

The opportunity cost of not joining the Euro is great. Multinationals and foreign companies (such as Asian companies) will find it easier to deal with just one currency across Europe, and so UK businesses would lose out on commerce and the UK on investment by foreign companies, simply because these companies find it more convenient to work in Euros. Trade with the Eurozone will also be discouraged because of the currency barrier that would then exist between the UK and Eurozone (as this would not exist within the Eurozone).

The argument that there is a choice to make between becoming closer with the EU or US economies are flawed. If the UK stays outside the Eurozone, it may well become closer to the US economy. However, it will (as outlined previously) distance the UK economy from EU commerce. Closer economic ties with the US might even mean, at this uncertain time for the US economy, that the UK economy is dragged down with the US to a greater extent than it would otherwise be, in the event of a major US recession. If the UK does participate in EMU, we will undoubtably become closer economically with the Eurozone (and hence the majority of the EU). This will not, however, result in distancing from US trade. It may even benefit us in terms of trade with the US, as the Euro exchange rate to the US Dollar may make our exports more competitive in US markets. In this uncertain period in the US economy, joining the Euro may also safeguard against the effects of a major US recession by increasing trade between the European nations.

The world - rich nations in particular - is already following a policy of opening up markets, the EU itself is an example of this. It is therefore sensible for the UK to participate in this to open up trade even further in the SEM - and this means participating in the Euro. Such policies tend to have short term disadvantages - such as unemployment as uncompetitive firms are rooted out - and longer term advantages, such as gradual gains in GDP growth.

The UK should therefore, after observing the effects of the Euro in the 12 countries now taking part, should look to the future, take a calculated risk and participate in EMU to maximise the benefits of the Single European Market and gain further from closer integration.

title: User:Sam Francis/The Euro


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Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (born Ermanno Wolf) (January 12, 1876 – January 21, 1948) was an Italian composer and teacher. He is best known for his comic operas such as Il segreto di Susanna (1909). A number of his works were based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, including Le donne curiose (1903), I quatro rusteghi (1906) and Il campiello (1936).

Life
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice in 1876, the son of German painter August Wolf and Emilia Ferrari, from Venice. He added his mother's maiden-name, Ferrari, to his surname in 1895. Although he studied piano from an early age, music was not the primary passion of his young life. As a teenager Wolf-Ferrari wanted to be a painter like his father; he studied intensively in Venice and Rome and traveled abroad to study in Munich. It was there that he decided to concentrate instead on music, taking lessons from Josef Rheinberger. He enrolled at the Munich conservatory and began taking counterpoint and composition classes. These initially casual music classes eventually completely eclipsed his art studies, and music took over Wolf-Ferrari's life. He wrote his first works in the 1890s. At age 19, Wolf-Ferrari left the conservatory and traveled home to Venice. There he worked as a choral conductor, married, had a son called Federico Wolf-Ferrari, and met both Arrigo Boito and Verdi. In 1900, having failed to have two previous efforts published, Wolf-Ferrari saw the first performance of one of his operas, Cenerentola, based on the story of Cinderella. The opera was a failure in Italy, and the humiliated young composer moved back to Munich. German audiences would prove more appreciative of his work; a revised version of Cenerentola was a hit in Bremen in 1902, while the cantata La vita nuova brought the young composer international fame.

Wolf-Ferrari now began transforming the wild and witty farces of the 18th-century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni into comic operas. The resulting works were musically eclectic, melodic, and utterly hilarious; every single one became an international success. In fact, until the outbreak of World War I, Wolf-Ferrari's operas were among the most performed in the world. In 1902 he became professor of composition and director of the Liceo Benedetto Marcello.

In 1911 Wolf-Ferrari tried his hand at full-blooded Verismo with I gioielli della Madonna; a story of passion, sacrilege and madness. It was quite popular in its day and for a period after, especially in Chicago, where the great Polish soprano Rosa Raisa made it a celebrated vehicle. Maria Jeritza (and, later, Florence Easton) triumphed in it at the Metropolitan Opera, in an all-out spectacular production in 1926.

World War I, however, was a nightmare for Wolf-Ferrari. The young composer, who had been dividing his time between Munich and Venice, suddenly found his two countries at war with each other. With the outbreak of the War, he moved to Zürich and composed much less, though he still wrote another comedy, Gli amanti sposi (1916). A new melancholy vein appeared in his post-war work; his operas grew darker and more emotionally complex. He did not really pick up his rate of output until the 1920s, when he wrote Das Himmelskleid (1925) and Sly (1927), the latter based on William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. In 1939 he became professor of composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 1946 he moved again to Zürich before returning to his home city of Venice. He died in Venice at Palazzo Malipiero and is buried in the San Michele cemetery on Island of San Michele.

Music
As well as his operas, Wolf-Ferrari wrote a number of instrumental works, mainly at the very beginning and very end of his career. Only his violin concerto has ever been performed with anything approaching regularity, though he also wrote Idillio-concertino (essentially a chamber symphony), various pieces of chamber music including a piano quintet and two piano trios, three violin sonatas and a number of works for the organ amongst others. In recent years, a recovery of his instrumental music has been underway by the pianist Costantino Catena, who has recorded his piano works, sonatas for violin and piano, sonata for cello and piano and piano quintet for the Brilliant Classics label.

Wolf-Ferrari's work is not performed very widely (with the exception of several of his overtures and his Jewels of the Madonna intermezzo) although he is generally thought of as probably the finest writer of Italian comic opera of his time. His works often recall the opera buffa of the 18th century, although he also wrote more ambitious works in the manner of Pietro Mascagni, which are thought of less well.

Operas

 * See List of operas by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari

Other vocal works

 * La sulamite (canto biblico), Op. 2 (1898)
 * 8 cori (unaccompanied) (1898)
 * Talitha Kumi (La figlia di Giaro) (oratorium, Bible: Mark), Op. 3 (1900)
 * La vita nuova (cantata, after Dante), Op. 9 (1901)
 * 4 Rispetti, Op. 11 (1902)
 * 4 Rispetti, Op. 12 (1902)
 * Canzoniere (Tuscan trad.) Op. 17 (1936)
 * La passione (Tuscan trad.) Op. 21 (for chorus, 1939; for voice and piano, 1940),

Orchestral

 * Serenade for Strings in E flat major
 * Idillio-concertino in A major for Oboe and small orchestra, Op. 15 (1932)
 * Suite-concertino in F major for Bassoon and small orchestra, Op. 16 (1933)
 * Venezianische Suite (Suite Veneziana) in A minor, Op.18
 * Triptychon (Trittico) op.19
 * Divertimento in D major op.20
 * Arabesken (Arabeschi) für Orchester op.22 (after a theme of Ettore Tito)
 * Violin Concerto in D, Op. 26 Guila Bustabo in ammirazione (1943)
 * Sinfonia Brevis in E flat major op.28
 * Concertino in A flat major for English horn and small orchestra, Op. 34 (1947)

Chamber music

 * String Sextet in C minor (1894/95, also as a string trio)
 * Sinfonia da Camera Op. 8 (1901)
 * Sonata No.1 for Violin & Piano in G minor, Op.1 (1895)
 * Sonata No.2 for Violin & Piano in A minor, Op.10 (1901)
 * Sonata No.3 for Violin & Piano in E major, Op.27 (1943)
 * Sonata for Cello & Piano in G major, Op.30 (1945)
 * String Duo in G minor for Violin & Cello, Op.33b (1946)
 * String Duo, "Introduzione e Balletto", for Violin & Cello, Op.35 (1948)
 * String Trio in B minor for Violin, Viola & Cello, WoO. (1894)
 * String Trio in A minor for Violin, Viola & Cello, Op.32 (1945)
 * String Quartet in E minor, Op.23 (1940)
 * String Quintet in C major for 2 Violins, 2 Violas & Cello, Op.24 (1942)
 * Piano Trio No.1 in D major, Op.5 (1898)
 * Piano Trio No.2 in F♯ major, Op.7 (1900)
 * Piano Trio "Sonata" for in F major for 2 Violins & Piano, Op.25 (1943)
 * Piano Quintet in D♭ major, Op.6 (1901)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari


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Tongass National Forest

The Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is the largest U.S. National Forest at 16.7 e6acre. Most of its area is temperate rain forest and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna. The Tongass, which is managed by the United States Forest Service, encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago, fjords and glaciers, and peaks of the Coast Mountains. An international border with Canada (British Columbia) runs along the crest of the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains. The forest is administered from Forest Service offices in Ketchikan. There are local ranger district offices located in Craig, Hoonah, Juneau, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka, Thorne Bay, Wrangell, and Yakutat.

History
The Alexander Archipelago Forest Reserve was established by Theodore Roosevelt in a presidential proclamation of 20 August 1902. Another presidential proclamation made by Roosevelt, on 10 September 1907, created the Tongass National Forest. On 1 July 1908, the two forests were joined, and the combined forest area encompassed most of Southeast Alaska. Further presidential proclamations of 16 February 1909 (in the last months of the Roosevelt administration) and 10 June, and in 1925 (by Calvin Coolidge) expanded the Tongass. An early supervisor of the forest was William Alexander Langille.

On 4 September 1971, Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 crashed in the Tongass National Forest, killing all 111 people on board.

Aboriginal title
After the creation of the Tongass National Forest, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska formed to challenge the federal government's rights to the land in 1935. In Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States, the court found Alaskan natives held established aboriginal title by their "exclusive use and occupancy of that territory from time immemorial". The court found the Alaska Treaty of Cessation between Russia and the United States did not extinguish aboriginal title to the land, and that the creation of the Tongass National Forest constituted a taking of land from the Tlingit and Haida. The case was finally settled in 1968 with a $7.5 million payment that valued the Tongass at about 43 cents an acre. The value was based on land value at the time of the taking in 1902, without the inflation or interest accrued in the past 66 years.

Logging
Timber harvest in Southeast Alaska consisted of individual handlogging operations up until the 1950s, focusing on lowlying areas and beach fringe areas. In the 1950s, in part to aid in Japanese recovery from World War II, the Forest Service set up long-term contracts with two pulp mills: the Ketchikan Pulp Company (KPC) and the Alaska Pulp Company. These contracts were scheduled to last 50 years, and originally intended to complement independent sawlog operations in the region. However, the two companies conspired to drive log prices down, put smaller logging operations out of business, and were major and recalcitrant polluters in their local areas. Ultimately, virtually all timber sales in the Tongass were purchased by one of these two companies.

In 1974, the exclusive KPC contract for 800,000 acres of old growth forest on Prince of Wales Island was challenged by the Point Baker Association led by Alan Stein, Chuck Zieske and Herb Zieske. Federal District Court judge James von der Heydt ruled in their favor in December 1975 and March 1976, enjoining clearcutting of over 150 sqmi of the north end of Prince of Wales Island. The suit threatened to halt clearcutting in the United States. In 1976, Congress removed the Zieske injunction in passing the National Forest Management Act. Over half the old growth timber was removed there by the mid 1990s.

The battle for buffer strips, to protect salmon streams from logging, which began in the Zieske v Butz lawsuit, continued through comments submitted to the major US Forest Service Environmental Impact Statements issued in subsequent five-year intervals starting in 1979, and continuing in the 1988 EIS.

In 1990, a Federal District Court in Alaska, in a case called Stein v Barton, held the US Forest Service had to protect all salmon streams in the Tongass with buffer strips. One of the claims in Stein v Barton for protection of the Salmon Bay Watershed was partially enacted into law when Congress Passed the Tongass Timber Reform Act; environmental lobbyists had compromised with Senator Ted Stevens leaving the most valuable forest available to logging in the headwaters of the salmon streams therein.

Much of the power of these companies lay in the long-term contracts. The contracts guaranteed low prices to the pulp companies—in some cases resulting in trees being given away for "less than the price of a hamburger".

The Tongass Timber Reform Act, enacted in 1990, significantly reshaped the logging industry's relationship with the Tongass National Forest. The law's provisions cancelled a $40 million annual subsidy for timber harvest; established several new wilderness areas and closed others to logging; and required that future cutting under the 50-year pulp contracts be subject to environmental review and limitations on old-growth harvest. Alaska Pulp Corporation and Ketchikan Pulp Corporation claimed that the new restrictions made them uncompetitive and closed down their mills in 1993 and 1997, respectively, and the Forest Service then cancelled the remainders of the two 50-year timber contracts.

In 2003, an appropriations bill rider required that all timber sales in the Tongass must be positive sales, meaning no sales could be sold that undervalued the "stumpage" rate, or the value of the trees as established by the marketplace (2008 Appropriations Bill P.L. 110–161, H. Rept. 110–497, Sec. 411). However, the Forest Service also conducts NEPA analyses, layout, and administrative operations to support these sales, and as such, the government does not make a profit overall. Given the guaranteed low prices during contract days and the continued high cost of logging in Southeast Alaska today, one analysis concludes that, since 1980, the Forest Service has lost over one billion dollars in Tongass timber sales. Logging operations are not the only deficit-run programs, however. The Forest Service likens the overall deficit of the timber harvest program to the many other programs the agency operates at a deficit, including trail, cabin, and campground maintenance and subsistence programs.

High-grading (preferentially targeting for logging the most profitable forest types) has been prevalent in the Tongass throughout the era of industrial-scale logging there. For example, the forest type with the largest concentration of big trees—volume class 7—originally comprised only 4% of the forested portion of the Tongass, and over two-thirds of it has been logged. Other high-grading has concentrated on stands of Alaska cedar and red cedar. The karst terrain often produces large trees and has fewer muskeg bogs, and has also been preferentially logged.

In a move that reverses a Trump administration decision to lift restrictions on logging and road-building, the Biden administration announced on 15 July 2021 that it would end large-scale, old-growth timber sales in the Tongass National Forest. Forest restoration, recreation and other non-commercial uses will instead be the focus. The new rules would still allow for smaller timber sales, including some old-growth trees, for cultural uses by local communities.

Roadless controversy
The most contested logging in the Tongass has involved the roadless areas. Southeast Alaska is an extensive landscape, with communities scattered across the archipelago on different islands, isolated from each other and the mainland road system. The road system that exists in the region is in place because of the resource extraction history in the region, primarily established by the Forest Service to enable timber harvest. Once in place, these roads serve to connect local communities and visitors to recreation, hunting, fishing, and subsistence opportunities long into the future. Installing roads in the vast wilderness areas of the Tongass has been opposed by the roadless area conservation movement, which claims that it would promote habitat fragmentation, diminish wildlife populations and damage salmon spawning streams. They argue that existing roads are sufficient.

The Tongass National Forest was included in the Roadless Initiative passed on 5 January 2001, during the last days of the Bill Clinton Administration, and the initiative prevented the construction of new roads in roadless areas of United States national forests.

In September 2006, a landmark court decision overturned Bush's repeal of the Roadless Rule, reverting to the 2001 roadless area protections established under president Clinton. The Tongass remained exempt from that ruling. In June 2007, U.S. House members added an amendment to the appropriations bill to block federally funded road building in Tongass National Forest. Proponents of the amendment said that the federal timber program in Tongass is a dead loss for taxpayers, costing some $30 million annually, and noted that the Forest Service faces an estimated $900 million road maintenance backlog in the forest. Supporters of the bipartisan amendment included the Republicans for Environmental Protection. Representative Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican who sponsored the amendment, said, "I am not opposed to logging when it's done on the timber company's dime… But in this case, they are using the American taxpayer to subsidize these 200 jobs at the tune of $200,000 per job. That just makes no sense."

In July 2009, the Obama Administration approved clearcut logging on 381 acre in the remaining old growth forests of a Tongass National Forest roadless area. The timber sale was permanently stopped by a lawsuit.

In March 2011, Judge John Sedwick from the Anchorage federal district court, in his ruling, reinstated the Roadless Rule on roadless areas in the Tongass, but with three of the Forest Service's recent timber projects excluded from that ruling "without prejudice." Those projects were Iyouktug Timber Sales ROD (record of decision), Scratchings Timber Sale ROD II, and Kuiu Timber Sale Area ROD. The Order concluded in part:

"Because the reasons proffered by the Forest Service in support of the Tongass Exemption were implausible, contrary to the evidence in the record, and contrary to Ninth Circuit precedent, the court concludes that promulgation of the Tongass Exemption was arbitrary and capricious.

'With the passage of the Roadless Rule, inventoried roadless areas, 'for better or worse, [were] more committed to pristine wilderness, and less amendable to road development for purposes permitted by the Forest Service.'''

While the Forest Service may reevaluate its approach to roadless area management in the Tongass, it must comply with the requirements of the APA [the federal Administrative Procedures Act] in doing so."

In October 2019, the Trump administration instructed federal officials to reverse the limits of tree cutting at the request of Alaska's top elected officials, including Senator Lisa Murkowski and Governor Michael J. Dunleavy. In a statement, Forest Service officials said the new plan would be subject to public comment for 60 days.

The Forest Service removed most of the Tongass National Forest from roadless area designation in October 2020, allowing road construction and logging in more than 9.3 million acres of rainforest. Clear-cut lands lose the carbon sink of old-growth forest, habitat for wildlife, and soil stability, causing landslides.

In June 2021, the Joe Biden administration revealed its intent to "repeal or replace" Trump's removal of roadless designation. According to Matt Herrick, spokesman for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under Biden, "We [the USDA] recognize the vital role the forest and its inventoried roadless areas play in communities, and in the economy and culture of southeast Alaska, as well as for climate resilience." The Biden administration planned to formally publish its intent to revise the Trump-era rule by August 2021, with details of the plan being finalized in the following two years. In November 2021, the administration officially published a rule to restore roadless protections in the Tongass National Forest; The rule took effect in January 2023, restoring the 2001 roadless rule.

Description
Known by the U.S. Forest Service as the "crown jewel", the Tongass stretches across 17 million acres of land and is Alaska's largest National Forest. Alaska Wilderness League describes the Tongass as "one of the last remaining intact temperate rainforests in the world". 70,000 people inhabit the region. While the timber industry dominated the economy for a long time, the region has transitioned into "non-timber... [sources of revenue] such as recreation, subsistence food, salmon, scientific use, and carbon sequestration [which] contributes more than $2 billion" annually. Tourism supports over 10,000 jobs in the Tongass National Forest, with about 10% being related to fishing activities.

Three Alaska Native nations live in Southeast Alaska: the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. Thirty-one communities are located within the forest; the largest is Juneau, the state capital, with a population of 31,000. The forest is named for the Tongass group of the Tlingit people, who inhabited the southernmost areas of Southeast Alaska, near what is now the city of Ketchikan.

Ecology
The Tongass includes parts of the Northern Pacific coastal forests and Pacific Coastal Mountain icefields and tundra ecoregions. Along with the Central and North Coast regions of British Columbia designated as the Great Bear Rainforest, the Tongass is part of the "perhumid rainforest zone", and the forest is primarily made up of western red cedar, sitka spruce, and western hemlock. The Tongass is Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest. The terrain underlying the forest is divided between karst (limestone rock, well-drained soil, and many caves) and granite (poorly drained soil).

Unique and protected creatures seldom found anywhere else in North America inhabit the thousands of islands along the Alaska coast. Five species of salmon, brown and black bears, and bald eagles abound throughout the forest. Other terrestrial animals include wolves, mountain goats, ravens, and sitka black-tailed deer. Many migratory birds spend summer months nesting among the archipelago, notably the Arctic tern. Orca and humpback whales, sea lions, seals, sea otters, river otters, and porpoises swim offshore. The Tongass is also home to steelhead and salmon. The Tongass is also the only place in the United States where the Haida ermine, a rare and endangered species of weasel, can be found; aside from here, the only other place on Earth where it is found is the Haida Gwaii archipelago in Canada. Of the three subspecies of the Haida ermine, one is found on Prince of Wales Island and the other is found on Suemez Island (both located within the Tongass), with the third being found on Haida Gwaii.

Though its land area is huge, about 40% of the Tongass is composed of wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation, while the remaining 10 e6acre are forested. About 5 e6acre are considered "productive old-growth", and 4500000 acre of those are preserved as wilderness areas.

Historically, logging operations tended to concentrate on lower-elevation, bigger-tree ecosystems for harvesting; at present, approximately 78% of the land remains intact, i.e. 383000 acre out of 491000 acre original big-tree, low-elevation forest area. Given the high value of these areas for wildlife species, close to 70% of this old growth forest is protected in reserves and will never be eligible for harvest.

Major disturbances in the Tongass National Forest include windfall and landslides. Local winter windstorms referred to as the "Takus" can affect the structure of some stands and often cause single-tree blow-downs.

Of all the old growth in the forest, no more than 11% of the remaining area will ever be harvested. Of the 5700000 acre of "productive old-growth" in the forest, 676000 acre, or 12% of the total old-growth, are slated for harvest over the next 10 years. Current harvesting plans call for a phase-out of old-growth harvesting, to be replaced by rotation harvesting of managed second-growth forests.

The World Wildlife Fund locates it in their Pacific temperate rain forest 'WWF ecoregion', a geographical area.

Wilderness areas
There are 19 designated wilderness areas within the Tongass National Forest, more than in any other national forest. They contain over 5750000 acre of territory, also more than any other. From largest to smallest, they are:

 * Misty Fjords National Monument Wilderness
 * Kootznoowoo Wilderness
 * Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness
 * Stikine-LeConte Wilderness
 * Russell Fjord Wilderness
 * South Baranof Wilderness
 * West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness
 * Endicott River Wilderness
 * South Prince of Wales Wilderness
 * South Etolin Wilderness
 * Chuck River Wilderness
 * Tebenkof Bay Wilderness
 * Kuiu Wilderness
 * Petersburg Creek-Duncan Salt Chuck Wilderness
 * Karta River Wilderness
 * Pleasant/Lemesurier/Inian Islands Wilderness
 * Coronation Island Wilderness
 * Warren Island Wilderness
 * Maurille Islands Wilderness

There are three other wilderness areas within the Alaska Panhandle region that are not part of the Tongass National Forest, but are administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. From largest to smallest they are the Forrester Island Wilderness, the Saint Lazaria Wilderness, and the Hazy Islands Wilderness. Also in Southeast Alaska, but not in the Tongass National Forest, are the Glacier Bay Wilderness and a small part of the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness, which are both administered by the National Park Service.

Recreation
The Tongass National Forest offers recreation opportunities, some of which are found only in Alaska. The forest has close to one million visitors each year. Most come by cruise ships arriving through the Inside Passage of Southeast Alaska. The Forest Service provides visitor programs at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center in Juneau and the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center in Ketchikan. The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, built in 1962, was the first Forest Service visitor center in the nation. The forest interpretive program on the state ferries began in the summer of 1968, and was the longest-running naturalist program in the agency until ending in 2013.

Native inholdings
Native corporation lands are those designated by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). This Act conveyed approximately 44000000 acre of federal land in Alaska to private native corporations which were created under the ANCSA. 632000 acre of those lands were hand-picked old growth areas of the Tongass National Forest and are still surrounded by public National Forest land. These lands are now privately held and under the management of Sealaska Corporation, one of the native regional corporations created under the ANCSA.Transference of public National Forest land to a privately owned corporation removes it from protection by Federal law and allows the owners to use the land in whatever way they see fit without regard to the effects of the use on surrounding lands and ecosystems. This fact has caused much controversy involving the business interests of Native Regional Corporations and the personal interests of local Native and non-Native residents of Southeastern Alaska.

Currently Sealaska, a native regional corporation created under the ANCSA is asking for an amendment to the Act that would distribute additional land to Alaskan Natives. When Sealaska was created, it was promised additional land that was unavailable at the time due to contracts with pulp mills; much of this original land is now under water or in a watershed, and consequently Sealaska has requested different land. On 23 April 2009, Senator Murkowski and U.S. Rep. Don Young introduced a revised Sealaska bill (S. 881 and H.R 2099) that requests public lands that are both economically valuable and environmentally delicate. Starting with the next session of Congress in 2011, Senator Murkowski reintroduced a slightly modified version of the Sealaska Bill and Representative Don Young introduced a companion bill (S 730 and HR 1408). While HR 1408 was passed out of the Natural Resources Committee, S 730 remains in the Natural Resources Committee of the Senate.

Known as the Sealaska Lands Bill, the removal of 91,000 acres from the regulatory protections of the USFS and transfer of the land to Sealaska, a for profit corporation, created a huge controversy in South East Alaska.

A study released by Audubon Alaska on 22 February 2012 showed that the Sealaska selection of the largest trees in areas designated in S 730 and HR 1408 is 1200 percent greater than the occurrence of these trees in the Tongass as a whole.

There is strong opposition to passage of S 881 coming from seven communities in the Tongass, most on Prince of Wales Island. In addition, there are fears expressed by the Territorial Sportsmen that the northern goshawk will be listed as endangered if the bill is passed. Similar concerns were expressed by the Alaska Outdoor Council in letters to Senators Murkowski and Begich and Governor Parnell.

General references

 * Rakestraw, Lawrence (1981). A History of the United States Forest Service in Alaska. Copyright Lawrence Rakestraw. Printed by the USDA Forest Service in 1982, 1994, 2002. SD565R24,.
 * Durbin, Kathie (1999). Tongass: Pulp Politics and the Fight for the Alaska Rain Forest. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University Press. ISBN 0-87071-466-X.
 * Ketchum, Robert Glenn (1987). The Tongass: Alaska's Vanishing Rain Forest: The Photographs of Robert Glenn Ketchum. Text by Robert Glenn Ketchum and Carey D. Ketchum; introduction by Roderick Nash. New York, New York: Aperture Foundation. Distributed in the U.S. by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
 * List, Peter C., ed. (2000). Environmental Ethics and Forestry: A Reader. Environmental Ethics, Values, and Policy series. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-784-7. ISBN 1-56639-785-5.
 * Gulick, Amy (2009). Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass Rain Forest. Written by Amy Gulick, Illustrated by Ray Troll. Published by Mountaineers Books. ISBN 978-1-59485-091-2

title: Tongass National Forest


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Antiochus VIII Grypus

Antiochus VIII Epiphanes/Callinicus/Philometor, nicknamed Grypus (, "hook-nose"), was the ruler of the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire from 125 to 96 BC. He was the younger son of Demetrius II and Cleopatra Thea. He may have spent his early life in Athens and returned to Syria after the deaths of his father and brother Seleucus V. At first he was joint ruler with his mother. Fearing her influence, Antiochus VIII had Cleopatra Thea poisoned in 121 BC.

Political instability affected most of Antiochus VIII's reign. From 116 BC he fought a civil war against his half-brother Antiochus IX. Antiochus VIII's wife, the Ptolemaic Egyptian princess Tryphaena, had her sister and the wife of Antiochus IX, the former Cleopatra IV of Egypt, murdered in 112 BC; Antiochus IX killed Tryphaena in revenge. In 102 BC, Antiochus VIII's aunt Cleopatra III of Egypt, the mother of the two rival queens, gave him the hand of her daughter Cleopatra Selene in marriage. Antiochus VIII was assassinated in 96 BC.

Family background and childhood
In 193 BC Cleopatra I, a Seleucid princess, married King Ptolemy V of Egypt. Their granddaughter Cleopatra Thea of the Ptolemaic dynasty married the claimant Alexander Balas half a century later in 150 BC. She later married Demetrius II of Syria, and they had two sons. Demetrius II was captured and held as a prisoner by the Parthian Empire. Antiochus VIII's uncle Antiochus VII took the throne and married Cleopatra Thea, but died in 129 BC while fighting against the Parthians; Demetrius II then returned to the throne, and died in 125 BC while waging a war for the Syrian throne against the claimant Alexander II. Demetrius II's eldest son Seleucus V became king after his death, but was soon killed by Cleopatra Thea. She made Antiochus VIII king, ruling as his co-regent.

Rise to power
Shortly after taking the throne, Antiochus VIII married his cousin, the Ptolemaic princess Tryphaena. Silver and bronze coins issued during the co-regency (125–121BC) of Antiochus VIII and Cleopatra Thea show the head of the queen appearing at front with her son's head behind hers. Her name is also the first listed on the coinage. These facts signify that she was the senior co-ruler. He defeated usurper Alexander II Zabinas in 123 BC. In 121 BC, Antiochus decided to rid himself of his influential mother. According to Justin, his mother tried to poison him with wine, but the suspicious king forced her to drink the cup herself. However, it was Grypus himself who would become famous for his interest in toxicology. Some poems about poisonous herbs believed to have been written by him are quoted by the famous physician Galen.

Reign as King of Syria

Despite political shortcomings, Grypus was a popular king. His ugly, lazy appearance on coins (common among the last Seleucids), together with stories of his lavish banquets, made posterity believe his dynasty was degenerate and decadent. This was, however, a conscious image invoking the Hellenistic concept of Tryphe - meaning good life, which the last Seleucids strove to be associated with, as opposed to the exhausting civil wars and feuds which troubled their reigns in reality.

A story of his luxurious parties claims he sent food home with guests who attended banquets, complete with a camel as beast of burden, as well as an attendant to carry the guest himself. This should certainly have caused some strain on the already depleted treasury.

Civil War
In 116 BC his half-brother and cousin Antiochus IX Cyzicenus returned from exile and a civil war began. Cyzicenus' wife, also named Cleopatra, was a sister of Tryphaena and was eventually killed in a dramatic fashion in the temple of Daphne outside Antioch, on the order of Tryphaena. Cyzicenus eventually killed Tryphaena as revenge. The two brothers then divided Syria between them until Grypus was killed by his minister Heracleon in 96 BC.

Family
He married the Ptolemaic princess Tryphaena ca. 125, and had six children by her:
 * Seleucus VI Epiphanes
 * Antiochus XI Epiphanes Philadelphus
 * Philip I Philadelphus
 * Demetrius III Eucaerus
 * Antiochus XII Dionysus
 * Laodice VII Thea, married to king Mithridates I Callinicus of Commagene as part of a settlement by Mithridates' father Sames II Theosebes Dikaios to ensure peace between the Kingdom of Commagene and the Seleucid Empire. Laodice and Mithridates' son was King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene, grandson to Grypus.

In 102, Cleopatra III of Egypt gave him her daughter Cleopatra Selene I in marriage, but she gave him no children. Afterwards, she went to marry Antiochus IX Cyzicenus.

title: Antiochus VIII Grypus


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Johnny Mercer

John Herndon Mercer (November 18, 1909 – June 25, 1976) was an American lyricist, songwriter, and singer, as well as a record label executive who co-founded Capitol Records with music industry businessmen Buddy DeSylva and Glenn E. Wallichs.

He is best known as a Tin Pan Alley lyricist, but he also composed music, and was a popular singer who recorded his own songs as well as songs written by others from the mid-1930s through the mid-1950s. Mercer's songs were among the most successful hits of the time, including "Moon River", "Days of Wine and Roses", "Autumn Leaves", and "Hooray for Hollywood". He wrote the lyrics to more than 1,500 songs, including compositions for movies and Broadway shows. He received nineteen Oscar nominations, and won four Best Original Song Oscars.

Early life
Mercer was born in Savannah, Georgia, where one of his first jobs, aged 10, was sweeping floors at the original 1919 location of Leopold's Ice Cream. Mercer lived on Lincoln Street, a block away from the store's East Gwinnett and Habersham location.

Mercer's father, George Anderson Mercer, was a prominent attorney and real-estate developer. Mercer's mother, Lillian Elizabeth (née Ciucevich), was the daughter of a Croatian immigrant father and a mother with Irish ancestry. Lillian was the senior Mercer's secretary and second wife. Lillian's father, born in Lastovo, in 1834 to Ivana Cucevic and Marijo Dundovic, was a merchant seaman who ran the Union blockade during the Civil War. Mercer was George's fourth son, and his first son by Lillian. His great-grandfather was Confederate General Hugh Weedon Mercer and he was a direct descendant of American Revolutionary War General Hugh Mercer, a Scottish soldier-physician who died at the Battle of Princeton. Mercer was also a distant cousin of General George S. Patton.

Mercer liked music as a small child and attributed his musical talent to his mother, who would sing sentimental ballads. Mercer's father also sang, mostly old Scottish songs. His aunt told him he was humming music when he was six months old and later she took him to see minstrel and vaudeville shows where he heard "coon songs" and ragtime. The family's summer home, "Vernon View", was on the tidal waters and Mercer's long summers there among mossy trees, saltwater marshes, and soft, starry nights inspired him years later.

Mercer's exposure to black music was perhaps unique among the white songwriters of his generation. As a child, Mercer had African-American playmates and servants, and he listened to the fishermen and vendors about him, who spoke and sang in the Gullah language (also known as "Geechee"). He was also attracted to Black church services. Mercer later stated, "Songs always fascinated me more than anything." He had no formal musical training but was singing in a choir by six and at 11 or 12 he had memorized almost all of the songs he had heard and became curious about who wrote them. He once asked his brother who the best Tin Pan Alley songwriter was, and his brother said Irving Berlin.

Despite Mercer's early exposure to music, his talent was clearly in creating the words and singing, not in playing music, though early on he had hoped to become a composer. In addition to the lyrics that Mercer memorized, he was an avid reader and wrote adventure stories. His attempts to play the trumpet and piano were not successful, and he never could read musical scores with any facility, relying instead on his own notation system.

As a teenager in the Jazz Era, he searched for records by early black blues/jazz figures including Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong. His father owned the first car in town, and Mercer's teenage social life was enhanced by his driving privilege, which sometimes verged on recklessness. The family would motor to the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, to escape the Savannah heat and there Mercer learned to dance (from Arthur Murray himself) and to flirt with Southern belles, his natural sense of rhythm helping him on both accounts. (Later, Mercer wrote a humorous song called "Arthur Murray Taught Me Dancing in a Hurry".)

Mercer attended the exclusive Woodberry Forest School in Virginia until 1927. Although not a top student, he was active in literary and poetry societies and as a humor writer for the school's publications. In addition, his exposure to classic literature augmented his already rich store of vocabulary and phraseology. He began to scribble ingenious, sometimes strained, rhymed phrases for later use. Mercer was also the class clown and a prankster, and member of the "hop" committee that booked musical entertainment on campus.

Mercer was already somewhat of an authority on jazz at an early age. His yearbook stated: "No orchestra or new production can be authoritatively termed 'good' until Johnny's stamp of approval has been placed upon it. His ability to 'get hot' under all conditions and at all times is uncanny." Mercer began to write songs, an early effort being "Sister Susie, Strut Your Stuff".

Given his family's long association with Princeton, New Jersey, and Princeton University, Mercer was groomed to go to school there, but those ambitions were dashed by his father's financial setbacks in the late 1920s. He went to work in his father's recovering business, collecting rent and running errands, but soon grew bored with the routine and with Savannah.

Starting out
Mercer moved to New York in 1928, when he was 19. The music he loved, jazz and blues, was booming in Harlem and Broadway was bursting with musicals and revues from George Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. Vaudeville, though beginning to fade, was still a strong musical presence. Mercer's first few jobs were as a bit actor (billed as John Mercer). Holed up in a Greenwich Village apartment with plenty of time on his hands and a beat-up piano to play, Mercer soon returned to singing and lyric writing. He secured a day job at a brokerage house and sang at night. Pooling his meager income with that of his roommates, Mercer managed to keep going, sometimes on little more than oatmeal. One night he dropped in on Eddie Cantor backstage to offer a comic song, but although Cantor didn't use the song, he began encouraging Mercer's career. Mercer's first lyric, for the song "Out of Breath (and Scared to Death of You)" (1930), composed by friend Everett Miller, appeared in a musical revue The Garrick Gaieties in 1930. Mercer met his future wife at the show, chorus girl Ginger Meehan. She had earlier been one of the many chorus girls pursued by the young crooner Bing Crosby. Through Miller's father, an executive at the prominent music publisher T. B. Harms, Mercer's first song was published. It was recorded by Joe Venuti and his New Yorkers.

The 20-year-old Mercer began to frequent the company of other songwriters and to learn the trade. He traveled to California to undertake a lyric writing assignment for the musical Paris in the Spring and met his idols Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. Mercer found the experience sobering and realized that he much preferred free-standing lyric writing to writing on demand for musicals. Upon his return, he got a job as staff lyricist for Miller Music for a $25-a-week draw, which give him a base income and enough prospects to win over and marry Ginger in 1931. The new Mrs. Mercer quit the chorus line and became a seamstress, and to save money the newlyweds moved in with Ginger's mother in Brooklyn. Johnny did not inform his own parents of his marriage until after the fact, perhaps in part because he knew that Ginger being Jewish would not sit comfortably with some members of his family, and he worried they would try to talk him out of marrying her. In 1932, Mercer won a contest to sing with the Paul Whiteman orchestra, but singing with the band did not help his situation significantly. He made his recording debut, singing with Frank Trumbauer's Orchestra, on April 5 of that year. Mercer then apprenticed with Yip Harburg on the score for Americana, a Depression-flavored revue famous for "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (not a Mercer composition), which gave Mercer invaluable training. While with Whiteman, he recorded two duets with fellow band member Jack Teagarden, "Fare Thee Well to Harlem" and "Christmas Night in Harlem." Both are talk songs in a heavy Black accent. The latter was a best-selling record. After several songs which didn't catch fire during his time with Whiteman, he wrote and sang "Pardon My Southern Accent" (1934). Mercer's fortunes improved dramatically with a chance pairing with Indiana-born Hoagy Carmichael, already famous for the standard "Stardust", who was intrigued by the "young, bouncy butterball of a man from Georgia." Mercer, later well known for rapidly writing lyrics, spent a year laboring over the ones for "Lazybones", which became a hit one week after its first radio broadcast, and each received a large royalty check of $1250. A regional song in pseudo-black dialect, it captured the mood of the times, especially in rural America. Mercer became a member of ASCAP and a recognized "brother" in the Tin Pan Alley fraternity, receiving congratulations from Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter among others. Whiteman lured Mercer back to his orchestra (to sing, write comic skits and compose songs), temporarily breaking up the working team with Carmichael.

During the golden age of sophisticated popular song of the late 1920s and early '30s, songs were put into revues with minimal regard for plot integration. The 1930s saw a shift from revues to stage and movie musicals using song to further the plot. Demand diminished accordingly for the pure stand-alone songs that Mercer preferred. Thus, although he had established himself in the New York music world, when he was offered a job in Hollywood to compose songs and perform in low-budget musicals for RKO, he accepted and followed idol Bing Crosby west.

Hollywood years
Mercer moved to Hollywood in 1935, and began writing music for films. His first Hollywood assignment was a B-movie college musical, Old Man Rhythm, to which he contributed two songs and appeared in a small role. His next project, To Beat the Band, was a commercial flop, but it led to a meeting and a collaboration with Fred Astaire on the moderately successful song "I'm Building Up to an Awful Let-Down".

Mercer landed into a hard-drinking circle, and began to drink more at parties and was prone to vicious outbursts when under the influence of alcohol, contrasting sharply with his ordinarily genial and gentlemanly behavior. Often he would assuage the guilt he felt for this behavior by sending roses the following day to the friend or acquaintance he had treated unkindly while drunk. Ironically, he would later say that he found the Hollywood nightlife lacking: "Hollywood was never much of a night town. Everybody had to get up too early ... the movie people were in bed with the chickens (or each other)."

Mercer's first big Hollywood song, the satirical "I'm an Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande", was inspired by a road trip through Texas (he wrote both the music and the lyrics). It was performed by Crosby in the film Rhythm on the Range in 1936, and from then on the demand for Mercer as a lyricist took off. His second hit that year was "Goody Goody", music by Matty Malneck. In 1937, Mercer began working for Warner Bros., working with the composer Richard Whiting, soon producing his standard, "Too Marvelous for Words", followed by "Hooray for Hollywood", the opening number in the film Hollywood Hotel (1937). After Whiting's sudden death from a heart attack, Mercer collaborated with Harry Warren and wrote "Jeepers Creepers", which earned Mercer his first Oscar nomination for Best Song (1938). Another hit with Warren in 1938 was "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby". The pair also created "Hooray for Spinach", a comic song produced for the film Naughty but Nice in 1939.

During a lull at Warners, Mercer revived his singing career. He joined Crosby's informal minstrel shows put on by the "Westwood Marching and Chowder Club", which included many Hollywood luminaries. Mercer worked on numerous duets for himself and Crosby to perform: several were recorded, and two, "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean" (1938) a reworking of an old vaudville song, and "Mister Meadowlark" (1940), became hits.

In 1939, Mercer wrote the lyrics to a melody by Ziggy Elman, a trumpet player with Benny Goodman. The song was "And the Angels Sing" and, although recorded by Crosby and Count Basie, it was the Goodman version with vocal by Martha Tilton and klezmer style trumpet solo by Elman that became a major hit. Years later, the title was inscribed on Mercer's tombstone.

Mercer was invited to the Camel Caravan radio show in New York to sing his hits and create satirical songs, like "You Ought to be in Pittsburgh", a parody of "You Ought to be in Pictures", with the Benny Goodman orchestra, then becoming the emcee of the nationally broadcast show for several months. Two more hits followed shortly, "Day In, Day Out" and "Fools Rush In" (both with music by Rube Bloom), and Mercer in short order had five of the top ten songs on the popular radio show Your Hit Parade. Mercer also started a short-lived publishing company during his stay in New York. Mercer undertook a musical, Walk with Music (originally called Three After Three), with Hoagy Carmichael, but it was critically panned and commercially unsuccessful.

Shortly thereafter, Mercer began working with Harold Arlen, who wrote jazz and blues-influenced compositions while Mercer wrote lyrics. Their first hit was "Blues in the Night" (1941), which Arthur Schwartz called "probably the greatest blues song ever written."

They went on to compose "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" (1941), "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" (1944), "That Old Black Magic" (1942), and "Come Rain or Come Shine" (1946), among others.

"Come Rain" was Mercer's only Broadway hit, composed for the show St. Louis Woman with Pearl Bailey. "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" with music by Harry Warren, was a big smash for Judy Garland in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls, and earned Mercer the first of his four Academy Awards for Best Song, after eight unsuccessful nominations.

Mercer re-united with Hoagy Carmichael with "Skylark" (1941), and, ten years later, the Oscar-winning "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (1951). With Jerome Kern, Mercer created You Were Never Lovelier for Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth in the movie of the same name, as well as "I'm Old Fashioned".

Mercer founded Capitol Records in Hollywood in 1942, with the help of producer Buddy DeSylva and record store owner Glen Wallichs. He also co-founded Cowboy Records. As the founder active in the management of Capitol during the 40s, he signed many of its important recording artists, including Nat "King" Cole. It also gave him an outlet for his own recordings. His hit "Strip Polka" was its third release. But Mercer recorded not only his own songs but ones by others as well. His four million-sellers were his own "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe", and two by other composers, "Candy" and "Personality". One recording of a song that has lived on is his recording of "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah", written by Allie Wrubel and Ray Gailbert for Disney's 1946 movie, Song of the South. Mercer's recording was a top hit for eight weeks in December 1947 and January 1948, reaching number 8. Today it continues to be the version most played on Sirius's 40s satellite channel.

Mercer by the mid-1940s enjoyed a reputation as one of the premier Hollywood lyricists. He was adaptable, listening carefully and absorbing a tune and then transforming it into his own style. Like Irving Berlin, he was a close follower of cultural fashion and changing language, which in part accounted for the long tenure of his success. He loved many words (Too Marvelous for Words), including puns (Strip Polka), and current terms ("G. I. Jive"). He employed sound effects, as well, such as the train whistle sounds in "Blues in the Night" and "On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe."

Mercer preferred to have the music first, taking it home and working on it. He claimed composers had no problem with this method provided that he returned with the lyrics.

Mercer was often asked to write new lyrics to already popular songs. The lyrics to "Laura", "Midnight Sun", and "Satin Doll" were all written after the melodies had become hits. He was also asked to compose English lyrics to foreign songs, the most famous example being "Autumn Leaves", based on the French song "Les Feuilles Mortes".

Radio programs
In 1943, Johnny Mercer's Music Shop was a summer replacement for The Pepsodent Show on NBC. Mercer was the star, and singers Ella Mae Morse and Jo Stafford were regulars on the program, with musical support from The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston and his orchestra. The Chesterfield Music Shop, a similar program in a 15-minute version, was broadcast in 1944.

1950s–1970s
In the 1950s, the advent of rock and roll cut deeply into Mercer's natural audience, and dramatically reduced venues for his songs. Mercer wrote for several MGM films, including Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Merry Andrew (1958). He collaborated on three Broadway musicals in the 1950s—Top Banana (1951), Li'l Abner (1956), and Saratoga (1959).

His more successful songs of the 1950s include "The Glow-Worm" (sung by the Mills Brothers) and "Something's Gotta Give". In 1961, he wrote the lyrics to "Moon River" for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's and for Days of Wine and Roses, both with music by Henry Mancini, and Mercer received his third and fourth Oscars for Best Song. The back-to-back Oscars were the first time a songwriting team had achieved that feat. Mercer, also with Mancini, wrote "Charade" for the 1963 romantic thriller of the same name. The Tony Bennett classic "I Wanna Be Around" was written by Mercer in 1962, as was the Frank Sinatra hit "Summer Wind" in 1965.

An indication of the high esteem in which Mercer was held can be observed in that he was the only lyricist to have his work recorded as a volume of Ella Fitzgerald's series of Song book albums. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Johnny Mercer Song Book was released by Verve Records in 1964.

Mercer was humble about his work, attributing much of his success to luck and timing. He was fond of telling the story of how he was offered the job of doing the lyrics for Johnny Mandel's music on The Sandpiper, only to have the producer turn his lyrics down. The producer offered the commission to Paul Francis Webster and the result was "The Shadow of Your Smile", which became a huge hit, winning the 1965 Oscar for Best Original Song. However, Mercer and Mandel did collaborate on the 1964 song "Emily" from the film The Americanization of Emily starring Julie Andrews.

In 1969, Mercer helped publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond found the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1971, Mercer presented a retrospective of his career for the "Lyrics and Lyricists Series" in New York, including an omnibus of his "greatest hits" and a performance by Margaret Whiting. It was recorded live as An Evening with Johnny Mercer. In 1974, he collaborated on the West End production The Good Companions. He also recorded two albums of his songs in London in 1974, with the Pete Moore Orchestra and with the Harry Roche Constellation, later compiled into a single album and released as ...My Huckleberry Friend: Johnny Mercer Sings the Songs of Johnny Mercer.

Late in his life, Mercer became friends with pianist Emma Kelly. He gave her the nickname "The Lady of Six-Thousand Songs" after challenging her, over several years, to play numerous songs he named. He kept track of the requests, and estimated she knew 6,000 songs from memory.

Posthumous success
In the last year of his life, Mercer became fond of pop singer Barry Manilow, in part because Manilow's first hit record was "Mandy", which was also the name of Mercer's daughter Amanda. After Mercer's death, his widow, Ginger Mehan Mercer, arranged to give some unfinished lyrics he had written to Manilow to possibly develop into complete songs. Among these was a piece titled "When October Goes", a melancholy remembrance of lost love. Manilow applied his own melody to the lyric and issued it as a single in 1984, when it became a top 10 Adult Contemporary hit in the United States. The song has since become a jazz standard, with notable recordings by Rosemary Clooney, Nancy Wilson, and Megon McDonough, among other performers.

Singing style
Well regarded also as a singer, with a folksy quality, Mercer was a natural for his own songs such as "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive", "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe", "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", and "Lazybones". He was considered a first-rate performer of his own work.

It has been said that he penned "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)"—one of the great torch laments of all times—on a napkin while sitting at the bar at P. J. Clarke's when Tommy Joyce was the bartender. The next day Mercer called Joyce to apologize for the line "So, set 'em up, Joe," explaining "I couldn't get your name to rhyme."

ATCO Records issued Two of a Kind in 1961, a duet album by Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer with Billy May and his Orchestra, produced by Ahmet Ertegun.

Personal life
In 1931, Mercer married Ginger Meltzer, a chorus girl, later a seamstress; and in 1940, when he was 30, the Mercers adopted a daughter, Amanda ("Mandy"). In 1960, Mandy married Bob Corwin, who was a pianist for Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, and Carmen McRae, and also Mercer's long-time accompanist. They had a son, Jim Corwin, in 1961.

In 1941, Mercer began an affair with 19-year-old Judy Garland, while she was engaged to composer David Rose. Garland ended her involvement when she married Rose. In later years, Garland and Mercer rekindled their affair. Mercer stated that his song "I Remember You" was the most direct expression of his feelings for Garland.

Mercer died aged 66 on June 25, 1976, from an inoperable brain tumor, in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. He was buried in Savannah's historic Bonaventure Cemetery. The line-drawing caricature adorning his memorial bench is a reproduction of a self-portrait.

Academy Awards
Mercer won four Academy Awards on eighteen nominations for Best Original Song:
 * 1946: "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe" (music by Harry Warren) for The Harvey Girls
 * 1951: "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" (music by Hoagy Carmichael) for Here Comes the Groom
 * 1961: "Moon River" (music by Henry Mancini) for Breakfast at Tiffany's
 * 1962: "Days of Wine and Roses" (music by Henry Mancini) for Days of Wine and Roses

Mercer was also nominated for Best Original Song Score for the 1970 Mancini collaboration Darling Lili.

Other
In 1980, the Songwriters Hall of Fame established the annual Johnny Mercer Award as its highest honor, for songwriters with a history of outstanding creative works. Mercer was honored by the United States Postal Service with his portrait placed on a stamp in 1996. Mercer's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1628 Vine Street is a block away from the Capitol Records building at 1750 Vine Street.

In 1983, Mercer earned a posthumous nomination for a Tony Award for Best Original Score for his original lyrics and for Gene de Paul's original music and score with new songs by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn for the stage musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at the 37th Tony Awards, but lost to Andrew Lloyd Webber and T. S. Eliot for Cats.

Mercer was given tribute in John Berendt's 1994 novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. The 1997 film adaptation directed by Clint Eastwood features prominently Hoagy Carmichael/Johnny Mercer song "Skylark", sung by k.d. lang. The movie soundtrack contains 14 Mercer songs performed by artists such as Alison Krauss, Paula Cole, and Cassandra Wilson; the film's star, Kevin Spacey, sang Mercer's 1942 hit "That Old Black Magic".

For the occasion of Mercer's 100th birthday in 2009, Eastwood produced a documentary film about Mercer's life and work called The Dream's on Me (Turner Classic Movies). The film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the category of Outstanding Nonfiction Special.

The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer was published by Knopf in October 2009. The Complete Lyrics contains the texts to nearly 1,500 of his lyrics, several hundred of them appearing in print for the first time.

In November 2009, a bronze statue of Mercer was unveiled in Ellis Square in Savannah, Georgia, his hometown and birthplace. It was commissioned by the Friends of Johnny Mercer.

The Johnny Mercer Collections, including his papers and memorabilia, are preserved in the library of Georgia State University in Atlanta. GSU occasionally holds events showcasing Mercer's works.

On March 25, 2015, it was announced that Mercer's version of the popular song "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive" would be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the song's "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation's audio legacy". The music was written by Harold Arlen and the lyrics by Mercer. The song was nominated for the "Academy Award for Best Original Song" at the 18th Academy Awards in 1945 after being used in the film "Here Come the Waves." In describing his inspiration for the lyrics, Mercer told the "Pop Chronicles" radio documentary "[my] publicity agent ... went to hear Father Divine and he had a sermon and his subject was 'you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.' And I said, 'Wow, that's a colorful phrase!'"

Discography

 * Johnny Mercer Sings (Capitol, 1950)
 * Two of a Kind with Bobby Darin (Atco, 1961)
 * Johnny Mercer with Paul Weston's Orchestra 1944 (Hindsight, 1980)
 * Sweet Georgia Brown with Paul Weston (Hindsight, 1995)
 * Johnny Mercer Sings Personality (ASV-Living Era, 2002)
 * Johnny Mercer: Mosaic Select #28 (Mosaic, 2007)
 * Mercer Sings Mercer (Capitol, 2009)

Further reading and listening

 * Mercer interviewed 1971.
 * Mercer interviewed 1971.
 * Mercer interviewed 1971.
 * Mercer interviewed 1971.
 * Mercer interviewed 1971.
 * Mercer interviewed 1971.

title: Johnny Mercer


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Membrane protein

Membrane proteins are common proteins that are part of, or interact with, biological membranes. Membrane proteins fall into several broad categories depending on their location. Integral membrane proteins are a permanent part of a cell membrane and can either penetrate the membrane (transmembrane) or associate with one or the other side of a membrane (integral monotopic). Peripheral membrane proteins are transiently associated with the cell membrane.

Membrane proteins are common, and medically important—about a third of all human proteins are membrane proteins, and these are targets for more than half of all drugs. Nonetheless, compared to other classes of proteins, determining membrane protein structures remains a challenge in large part due to the difficulty in establishing experimental conditions that can preserve the correct (native) conformation of the protein in isolation from its native environment.

Function
Membrane proteins perform a variety of functions vital to the survival of organisms:
 * Membrane receptor proteins relay signals between the cell's internal and external environments.
 * Transport proteins move molecules and ions across the membrane. They can be categorized according to the Transporter Classification database.
 * Membrane enzymes may have many activities, such as oxidoreductase, transferase or hydrolase.
 * Cell adhesion molecules allow cells to identify each other and interact. For example, proteins involved in immune response

The localization of proteins in membranes can be predicted reliably using hydrophobicity analyses of protein sequences, i.e. the localization of hydrophobic amino acid sequences.

Integral membrane proteins

Integral membrane proteins are permanently attached to the membrane. Such proteins can be separated from the biological membranes only using detergents, nonpolar solvents, or sometimes denaturing agents. They can be classified according to their relationship with the bilayer:

 * Integral polytopic proteins are transmembrane proteins that span across the membrane more than once. These proteins may have different transmembrane topology. These proteins have one of two structural architectures:
 * Helix bundle proteins, which are present in all types of biological membranes;
 * Beta barrel proteins, which are found only in outer membranes of Gram-negative bacteria, and outer membranes of mitochondria and chloroplasts.
 * Bitopic proteins are transmembrane proteins that span across the membrane only once. Transmembrane helices from these proteins have significantly different amino acid distributions to transmembrane helices from polytopic proteins.
 * Integral monotopic proteins are integral membrane proteins that are attached to only one side of the membrane and do not span the whole way across.

Peripheral membrane proteins

Peripheral membrane proteins are temporarily attached either to the lipid bilayer or to integral proteins by a combination of hydrophobic, electrostatic, and other non-covalent interactions. Peripheral proteins dissociate following treatment with a polar reagent, such as a solution with an elevated pH or high salt concentrations.

Integral and peripheral proteins may be post-translationally modified, with added fatty acid, diacylglycerol or prenyl chains, or GPI (glycosylphosphatidylinositol), which may be anchored in the lipid bilayer.

Polypeptide toxins
Polypeptide toxins and many antibacterial peptides, such as colicins or hemolysins, and certain proteins involved in apoptosis, are sometimes considered a separate category. These proteins are water-soluble but can undergo significant conformational changes, form oligomeric complexes and associate irreversibly or reversibly with the lipid bilayer.

In genomes
Membrane proteins, like soluble globular proteins, fibrous proteins, and disordered proteins, are common. It is estimated that 20–30% of all genes in most genomes encode for membrane proteins. For instance, about 1000 of the ~4200 proteins of E. coli are thought to be membrane proteins, 600 of which have been experimentally verified to be membrane resident. In humans, current thinking suggests that fully 30% of the genome encodes membrane proteins.

In disease
Membrane proteins are the targets of over 50% of all modern medicinal drugs. Among the human diseases in which membrane proteins have been implicated are heart disease, Alzheimer's and cystic fibrosis.

Purification of membrane proteins
Although membrane proteins play an important role in all organisms, their purification has historically, and continues to be, a huge challenge for protein scientists. In 2008, 150 unique structures of membrane proteins were available, and by 2019 only 50 human membrane proteins had had their structures elucidated. In contrast, approximately 25% of all proteins are membrane proteins. Their hydrophobic surfaces make structural and especially functional characterization difficult. Detergents can be used to render membrane proteins water-soluble, but these can also alter protein structure and function. Making membrane proteins water-soluble can also be achieved through engineering the protein sequence, replacing selected hydrophobic amino acids with hydrophilic ones, taking great care to maintain secondary structure while revising overall charge.

Affinity chromatography is one of the best solutions for purification of membrane proteins. The polyhistidine-tag is a commonly used tag for membrane protein purification, and the alternative rho1D4 tag has also been successfully used.

Organizations

 * Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium
 * Experts for Membrane Protein Research and Purification

Membrane protein databases

 * TCDB - Transporter Classification database, a comprehensive classification of transmembrane transporter proteins
 * Orientations of Proteins in Membranes (OPM) database - 3D structures of integral and peripheral membrane proteins arranged in the lipid bilayer
 * Protein Data Bank of Transmembrane Proteins - 3D models of transmembrane proteins approximately arranged in the lipid bilayer.
 * TransportDB - Genomics-oriented database of transporters from TIGR
 * Membrane PDB - Database of 3D structures of integral membrane proteins and hydrophobic peptides with an emphasis on crystallization conditions
 * Mpstruc database - A curated list of selected transmembrane proteins from the Protein Data Bank
 * MemProtMD - a database of membrane protein structures simulated by coarse-grained molecular dynamics
 * Membranome database provides information about bitopic proteins from several model organisms

title: Membrane protein