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Murphy's law

Murphy's law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." In some formulations, it is extended to "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time."

Though similar statements and concepts have been made over the course of history, the law itself was coined by, and is named after, American aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy Jr.; its exact origins are debated, but it is generally agreed it originated from Murphy and his team following a mishap during rocket sled tests some time between 1948 and 1949, and was finalized and first popularized by testing project head John Stapp during a later press conference. Murphy's original quote was the precautionary design advice that "If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way."

The law entered wider public knowledge in the late 1970s with the publication of Arthur Bloch's 1977 book Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG, which included other variations and corollaries of the law. Since then, Murphy's law has remained a popular (and occasionally misused) adage, though its accuracy has been disputed by academics.

Similar "laws" include Sod's law, Finagle's law, and Yhprum's law, among others.

History
The perceived perversity of the universe has long been a subject of comment, and precursors to the modern version of Murphy's law are abundant. According to Robert A. J. Matthews in a 1997 article in Scientific American, the name "Murphy's law" originated in 1949, but the concept itself had already long since been known to humans. As quoted by Richard Rhodes, Matthews said, "The familiar version of Murphy's law is not quite 50 years old, but the essential idea behind it has been around for centuries. […] The modern version of Murphy's Law has its roots in U.S. Air Force studies performed in 1949 on the effects of rapid deceleration on pilots." Matthews goes on to explain how Edward A. Murphy Jr. was the eponym, but only because his original thought was modified subsequently into the now established form that is not exactly what he himself had said. Research into the origin of Murphy's law has been conducted by members of the American Dialect Society (ADS).

Mathematician Augustus De Morgan wrote on June 23, 1866: "The first experiment already illustrates a truth of the theory, well confirmed by practice, what-ever can happen will happen if we make trials enough." In later publications "whatever can happen will happen" occasionally is termed "Murphy's law", which raises the possibility that "Murphy" is simply "De Morgan" misremembered.

ADS member Stephen Goranson found a version of the law, not yet generalized or bearing that name, in a report by Alfred Holt at an 1877 meeting of an engineering society.

It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific … Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.

ADS member Bill Mullins found a slightly broader version of the aphorism in reference to stage magic. The British stage magician Nevil Maskelyne wrote in 1908:

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.

In astronomy, "Spode's Law" refers to the phenomenon that the skies are always cloudy at the wrong moment; the law was popularized by amateur astronomer Patrick Moore but dates from the 1930s.

In 1948, humorist Paul Jennings coined the term resistentialism, a jocular play on resistance and existentialism, to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans.

In 1952, as an epigraph to the mountaineering book The Butcher: The Ascent of Yerupaja, John Sack described the same principle, "Anything that can possibly go wrong, does", as an "ancient mountaineering adage".

Association with Murphy
Differing recollections years later by various participants make it impossible to pinpoint who first coined the saying Murphy's law. The law's name supposedly stems from an attempt to use new measurement devices developed by Edward A. Murphy, a United States Air Force (USAF) captain and aeronautical engineer. The phrase was coined in an adverse reaction to something Murphy said when his devices failed to perform and was eventually cast into its present form prior to a press conference some months later – the first ever (of many) given by John Stapp, a USAF colonel and flight surgeon in the 1950s.

From 1948 to 1949, Stapp headed research project MX981 at Muroc Army Air Field (later renamed Edwards Air Force Base) for the purpose of testing the human tolerance for g-forces during rapid deceleration. The tests used a rocket sled mounted on a railroad track with a series of hydraulic brakes at the end. Initial tests used a humanoid crash test dummy strapped to a seat on the sled, but subsequent tests were performed by Stapp, at that time a USAF captain. During the tests, questions were raised about the accuracy of the instrumentation used to measure the g-forces Captain Stapp was experiencing. Edward Murphy proposed using electronic strain gauges attached to the restraining clamps of Stapp's harness to measure the force exerted on them by his rapid deceleration. Murphy was engaged in supporting similar research using high speed centrifuges to generate g-forces.

During a trial run of this method using a chimpanzee, supposedly around June 1949, Murphy's assistant wired the harness and the rocket sled was launched. The sensors provided a zero reading; however, it became apparent that they had been installed incorrectly, with some sensors wired backwards. It was at this point a frustrated Murphy made his pronouncement, despite being offered the time and chance to calibrate and test the sensor installation prior to the test proper, which he declined somewhat irritably, getting off on the wrong foot with the MX981 team. George E. Nichols, an engineer and quality assurance manager with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was present at the time, recalled in an interview that Murphy blamed the failure on his assistant after the failed test, saying, "If that guy has any way of making a mistake, he will." Nichols' account is that "Murphy's law" came about through conversation among the other members of the team; it was condensed to "If it can happen, it will happen", and named for Murphy in mockery of what Nichols perceived as arrogance on Murphy's part. Others, including Edward Murphy's surviving son Robert Murphy, deny Nichols' account, and claim that the phrase did originate with Edward Murphy. According to Robert Murphy's account, his father's statement was along the lines of "If there's more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then he will do it that way."

The phrase first received public attention during a press conference in which Stapp was asked how it was that nobody had been severely injured during the rocket sled tests. Stapp replied that it was because they always took Murphy's law under consideration; he then summarized the law and said that in general, it meant that it was important to consider all the possibilities (possible things that could go wrong) before doing a test and act to counter them. Thus Stapp's usage and Murphy's alleged usage are very different in outlook and attitude. One is sour, the other an affirmation of the predictable being surmountable, usually by sufficient planning and redundancy. Nichols believes Murphy was unwilling to take the responsibility for the device's initial failure (by itself a blip of no large significance) and is to be doubly damned for not allowing the MX981 team time to validate the sensor's operability and for trying to blame an underling in the embarrassing aftermath.

The name "Murphy's law" was not immediately secure. A story by Lee Correy in the February 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction referred to "Reilly's law", which states that "in any scientific or engineering endeavor, anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Lewis Strauss was quoted in the Chicago Daily Tribune on February 12, 1955, saying "I hope it will be known as Strauss' law. It could be stated about like this: If anything bad can happen, it probably will."

Arthur Bloch, in the first volume (1977) of his Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG series, prints a letter that he received from Nichols, who recalled an event that occurred in 1949 at Edwards Air Force Base that, according to him, is the origination of Murphy's law, and first publicly recounted by Stapp. An excerpt from the letter reads:

"The law's namesake was Capt. Ed Murphy, a development engineer from Wright Field Aircraft Lab. Frustration with a strap transducer which was malfunctioning due to an error in wiring the strain gage bridges caused him to remark – 'If there is any way to do it wrong, he will' – referring to the technician who had wired the bridges at the Lab. I assigned Murphy's law to the statement and the associated variations."

Disputed origins
The association with the Muroc incident is by no means secure. Despite extensive research, no trace of documentation of the saying as "Murphy's law" has been found before 1951. The next citations are not found until 1955, when the May–June issue of Aviation Mechanics Bulletin included the line "Murphy's law: If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly, someone will install it that way", and Lloyd Mallan's book Men, Rockets and Space Rats, referred to: "Colonel Stapp's favorite takeoff on sober scientific laws—Murphy's law, Stapp calls it—'Everything that can possibly go wrong will go wrong'." In 1962, the Mercury Seven attributed Murphy's law to United States Navy training films.

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, has shown that in 1952 the adage was called "Murphy's law" in a book by Anne Roe, quoting an unnamed physicist:

he described [it] as "Murphy's law or the fourth law of thermodynamics" (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

In May 1951, Anne Roe gave a transcript of an interview (part of a thematic apperception test, asking impressions on a drawing) with said physicist: "As for himself he realized that this was the inexorable working of the second law of the thermodynamics which stated Murphy's law 'If anything can go wrong it will'. I always liked 'Murphy's law'. I was told that by an architect." ADS member Stephen Goranson, investigating this in 2008 and 2009, found that Anne Roe's papers, held in the American Philosophical Society's archives in Philadelphia, identified the interviewed physicist as Howard Percy "Bob" Robertson (1903–1961). Robertson's papers at the Caltech archives include a letter in which Robertson offers Roe an interview within the first three months of 1949, making this apparently predate the Muroc incident said to have occurred in or after June 1949.

Academic and scientific views
According to Richard Dawkins, so-called laws like Murphy's law and Sod's law are nonsense because they require inanimate objects to have desires of their own, or else to react according to one's own desires. Dawkins points out that a certain class of events may occur all the time, but are only noticed when they become a nuisance. He gives an example of aircraft noise pollution interfering with filming: there are always aircraft in the sky at any given time, but they are only taken note of when they cause a problem. This is a form of confirmation bias, whereby the investigator seeks out evidence to confirm their already-formed ideas, but does not look for evidence that contradicts them.

Similarly, David Hand, emeritus professor of mathematics and senior research investigator at Imperial College London, points out that the law of truly large numbers should lead one to expect the kind of events predicted by Murphy's law to occur occasionally. Selection bias will ensure that those ones are remembered and the many times Murphy's law was not true are forgotten.

There have been persistent references to Murphy's law associating it with the laws of thermodynamics from early on (see the quotation from Anne Roe's book above). In particular, Murphy's law is often cited as a form of the second law of thermodynamics (the law of entropy) because both are predicting a tendency to a more disorganized state. Atanu Chatterjee investigated this idea by formally stating Murphy's law in mathematical terms and found that Murphy's law so stated could be disproved using the principle of least action.

Variations (corollaries) of the law
From its initial public announcement, Murphy's law quickly spread to various technical cultures connected to aerospace engineering. Before long, variations of the law applied to different topics and subjects had passed into the public imagination, changing over time. Arthur Bloch compiled a number of books of corollaries to Murphy's law and variations thereof, the first being Murphy's Law, and Other Reasons Why Things Go WRONG, which received several follow-ups and reprints.

Yhprum's law is an optimistic reversal of Murphy's law, stating that "anything that can go right will go right". Its name directly references this, being "Murphy" in reverse.

Management consultant Peter Drucker formulated "Drucker's law" in dealing with complexity of management: "If one thing goes wrong, everything else will, and at the same time."

"Mrs. Murphy's law" is a corollary of Murphy's law, which states that "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong while Mr. Murphy is out of town."

The term is sometimes used to describe concise, ironic, humorous rules of thumb that often do not share a relation to the original law or Edward Murphy himself, but still posit him as a relevant expert in the law's subject. Examples of these "Murphy's laws" include those for military tactics, technology, romance, social relations, research, and business.

title: Murphy's law


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International Sign

International Sign (IS) is a pidgin sign language which is used in a variety of different contexts, particularly as an international auxiliary language at meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) congress, in some European Union settings, and at some UN conferences, at events such as the Deaflympics, the Miss & Mister Deaf World, and Eurovision, and informally when travelling and socialising.

Linguists do not agree on what the term International Sign means precisely, and empirically derived dictionaries are lacking.

Naming
While the more commonly used term is International Sign, it is sometimes referred to as Gestuno, or International Sign Pidgin and International Gesture (IG). International Sign (IS) is a term used by the World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) and other international organisations.

History
Deaf people in the Western and Middle Eastern world have gathered together using sign language for 2,000 years. When Deaf people from different sign language backgrounds get together, a variety of sign language arises from this contact, whether it is in an informal personal context or in a formal international context. Deaf people have therefore used a kind of auxiliary gestural system for international communication at sporting or cultural events since the early 19th century. The need to standardise an international sign system was discussed at the first World Deaf Congress in 1951, when the WFD was formed. In the following years, a pidgin developed as the delegates from different language backgrounds communicated with each other, and in 1973, a WFD committee ("the Commission of Unification of Signs") published a standardized vocabulary. They selected "naturally spontaneous and easy signs in common use by deaf people of different countries" to make the language easy to learn. A book published by the commission in 1975, Gestuno: International Sign Language of the Deaf, contains a vocabulary list of 1,470 signs. The name Gestuno was chosen, referencing gesture and oneness.

However, when Gestuno was first used at the WFD congress in Bulgaria in 1976, it was incomprehensible to deaf participants. Subsequently, it was developed informally by deaf and hearing interpreters, and came to include more grammar, especially linguistic features that are thought to be universal among sign languages, such as role shifting, movement repetitions, the use of signing space, and classifiers. Additionally, the vocabulary was gradually replaced by more iconic signs and loan signs from various sign languages.

The first training course in Gestuno was conducted in Copenhagen in 1977 to prepare interpreters for the 5th World Conference on Deafness. Sponsored by the Danish Association of the Deaf and the University of Copenhagen, the course was designed by Robert M. Ingram and taught by Betty L. Ingram, two American interpreters of deaf parents.

The name Gestuno has fallen out of use, and the phrase International Sign is now more commonly used in English to identify this variety of sign. This may be because current IS has little in common with the signs published under the name Gestuno.

Description
International Sign has been described as a highly variable type of signed communication used between two signers who lack a common sign language. Most experts do not technically consider IS to be a full language, but rather a form of communication that arises on the spot. It is characterized by a focus on iconic or pantomimic structures; IS signers may also point to nearby objects. While some degree of standardization takes place at events such WFD and the European Union of the Deaf, it is limited to vocabulary, not grammar.

There is no consensus on what International Sign is exactly. It may either refer to the way strangers sign with each other when they lack a common sign language, or it can refer to a conventionalized form used by a group of people with regular contact. The use of the term International Sign might also lead to the misconception that it is a standardized form of communication.

Deaf people typically know only one sign language. Signers from differing countries may use IS spontaneously with each other, with relative success. This communicative success is linked to various factors. First, people who sign in IS have a certain amount of shared contextual knowledge. Secondly, signers may take advantage of shared knowledge of a spoken language, such as English. Thirdly, communication is made easier by the use of iconic signs and pantomime.

Vocabulary
The lexicon of International Sign is made by negotiation between signers. IS signers reportedly use a set of signs from their own national sign language mixed with highly iconic signs that can be understood by a large audience. Many, not to say most, signs are taken from American Sign Language during the past 30 years. In 1973, a committee created and standardized a system of international signs. They tried to choose the most understandable signs from diverse sign languages to make the language easy to learn for not only the Deaf but for both interim management and an everyday observer. IS interpreter Bill Moody noted in a 1994 paper that the vocabulary used in conference settings is largely derived from the sign languages of the Western world and is less comprehensible to those from African or Asian sign language backgrounds. A 1999 study by Bencie Woll suggested that IS signers often use a large amount of vocabulary from their native language, choosing sign variants that would be more easily understood by a foreigner. In contrast, Rachel Rosenstock notes that the vocabulary exhibited in her study of International Sign was largely made up of highly iconic signs common to many sign languages:"Over 60% of the signs occurred in the same form in more than eight SLs as well as in IS. This suggests that the majority of IS signs are not signs borrowed from a specific SL, as other studies found, but rather are common to many natural SLs. Only 2% of IS signs were found to be unique to IS. The remaining 38% were borrowed (or 'loan') signs that could be traced back to one SL or a group of related SLs."International Sign has a simplified lexicon. In IS for example, the English who, what, and how are all translated simply to what. Another example of this simplified lexicon is the location of the sign itself. IS will use movements on the chest to indicate feeling signs, and signs near the head will indicate cognitive activity. There have been several attempts at making dictionaries for IS. However, these lack detailed information on data collection, nor do they describe the exact meaning or how the signs should be used. This causes difficulty for training and teaching people in IS, as there is no empirical evidence.

Manual alphabet
The manual alphabet of IS belongs to the French family of manual alphabets, specifically in a subgroup around to the modern American manual alphabet. However, some letters differ in a few finger positions to the American alphabet.

IS numbers larger than five are, unlike in ASL, performed by two hands.

Grammar
Very little is known about the grammar of IS. It tends to use fewer mouthings and often has a larger signing space. The use of mouth gestures for adverbials is emphasized.

People communicating in IS tend to make heavy use of: It has been noted that signers are generally better at interlingual communication than non-signers, even using a spoken lingua franca.
 * 1) role play,
 * 2) index and reference locations in the signing space in front of the signer, on the head and trunk, and on the non-dominant hand,
 * 3) different movement repetitions,
 * 4) size and shape delineation techniques using handshapes and extensions of movements of the hands (Size and Size Specifiers, SASS), and
 * 5) a feature common to most sign languages: an extensive formal system of classifiers used in verbs/predicates (classifiers are handshapes used to describe things, handle objects, and represent a few semantic classes that are regarded by IS signers to be widespread in sign languages, helping them to overcome linguistic barriers).

A paper presented in 1994 suggested that IS signers "combine a relatively rich and structured grammar with a severely impoverished lexicon". Supalla and Webb (1995) describe IS as a kind of a pidgin, but conclude that it is "more complex than a typical pidgin and indeed is more like that of a full sign language".

Recent studies of International Sign
Simplification of signs in IS can vary between interpreters (one can choose a simplification over a much longer explanation), and because of this, certain information can be lost in translation. Because sign language relies heavily on local influences, many Deaf people do not understand each other's signs. Furthermore, cultural differences in signs can vary even within borders. In these cases, many Deaf people revert to fingerspelling and gestures or mime, which has its own variations based on similar sign language properties.

The World Federation of the Deaf (WFD) has raised concern about the issues with simplification and standardization, and that it limits a sign to a single meaning or word, thus losing all natural forms of the initial meaning.

An ethnographic study notes that there is some controversy among deaf people about how accessible IS is to deaf people from different places; it also observes that many deaf people are nevertheless highly motivated to do the work of communicating across linguistic and other differences.

Examples

 * WFD homepage – contains a short QuickTime video in IS with English subtitles.
 * Digital version of Gestuno: International Sign Language of the Deaf/Langage Gestuel International des Sourds — contains original IS signs (many now outdated) in photograph form
 * Short International Sign Language Dictionary web archive
 * EU sample dictionary of IS (sematos)
 * European Union on the Deaf (EUD) - Information on IS
 * Signs2Cross Project - Information on International Sign

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

title: International Sign


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Kerch

Kerch, also known as Keriç or Kerich, is a city of regional significance on the Kerch Peninsula in the east of Crimea. It has a population of

Founded 2,600 years ago as the ancient Greek colony Pantikapaion, Kerch is one of the most ancient cities in Crimea. The city experienced rapid growth starting in the 1920s and was the site of a major battle during World War II.

Today, it is one of the largest cities in Crimea and is among the area's most important industrial, transport and tourist centres. As with the rest of Crimea, it has been occupied by Russian forces since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Ancient times
Archeological digs at Mayak village near the city ascertained that the area had already been inhabited in the 17th–15th centuries BC. While many finds from Kerch can be found in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and the local museum, a large number of antique sculptures, reliefs, bronze and glassware, ceramics and jewellery were excavated in 1855–1856 during the Crimean War by Duncan MacPherson, a surgeon from the British Army, and later donated to the British Museum in London.

Kerch as a city starts its history in the 7th century BC, when Greek colonists from Miletus founded a city-state named Panticapaeum on Mount Mithridat near the mouth of the Melek-Chesme river. Panticapaeum subdued nearby cities and by 480 BC became the capital of the Kingdom of Bosporus. Later, during the rule of Mithradates VI Eupator, Panticapaeum for a short period of time became the capital of the much more powerful and extensive Kingdom of Pontus. The city was located at the intersection of trade routes between the steppe and Europe. This caused it to grow rapidly. The city's main exports were grain and salted fish; wine-making was also common. Panticapaeum minted its own coins. According to extant documents the Melek-Chesme river (small and shallow nowadays) was navigable in Bosporan times, and sea galleys were able to enter the river. A large portion of the city's population was ethnically Scythian, later Sarmatian, as the large royal barrow (Kurgan) at Kul-Oba testifies.

In the 1st century AD Panticapaeum and the Kingdom of Bosporus suffered from Ostrogoth raids; then the city was devastated by the Huns in AD 375.

Myrmekion was founded in the eastern part of the Kerch, 4 km NE of ancient Panticapaeum. The settlement was founded by Ionians in the first half of the 6th c. BC.

Middle Ages

From the 6th century the city was under the control of the Byzantine Empire. By order of Emperor Justinian I, a citadel named Bospor was built there. Bospor was the centre of a bishopric, the diocese of Bosporus and developed under the influence of Greek Christianity. In 576, it withstood a siege by the Göktürks under Bokhan, aided by Anagai, the last khan (ruler) of the Uturgurs (tribe of Huns).

In the 7th century, the Turkic Khazars took control of Bospor, and the city was named Karcha from Turkic "karşı" meaning 'opposite, facing.' The main local government official during Khazar times was the tudun. During Khazar rule, Kerch was used as a major port for the Khazar slave trade, through which slaves were exported to the Black Sea slave trade.

Christianity was a major religion in Kerch during the period of Khazar rule. Kerch's Church of St. John the Baptist was founded in 717; thus, it is the oldest church in Ukraine. The Church of the Apostles existed during the late 8th and early 9th centuries, according to the Life of the Apostle Andrew by Epiphanius of Salamis.

Following the fall of Khazaria to Kievan Rus' in the late 10th century, Kerch became the centre of a Khazar successor-state. Its ruler, Georgius Tzul, was deposed by a Byzantine-Rus expedition in 1016.

From the 10th century, the city was a Slavic settlement named Korchev, which belonged to the Tmutarakan principality. Kerch was a center of trade between Russia', Crimea, Caucasus and the Orient.

In the 13th century, Crimea including Korchev was invaded by Mongols. After the Mongols, the city became the Genoese colony of Cerco (Cherkio) in 1318 and served as a sea harbour, where townspeople worked at salt works and fishery.

In 1475, the city was passed to the Ottoman Empire. During the Turkish rule Kerch fell into decay and served as a slave-market. It repeatedly suffered from raids of Zaporizhian Cossacks.

18th–20th centuries

In response to the strengthening of Russian military forces in Azov area, the Turks built a fortress, named Yenikale, near Kerch on the shore of Kerch Strait. The fortress was completed by 1706. In 1771 the Imperial Russian Army invaded Crimea and approached Yenikale. The Turks decided to abandon the fortress, though reinforcements from the Ottoman Empire had arrived a few days earlier. By the Peace Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji in 1774, Kerch and Yenikale were ceded to Russia. As a result, the Turkish heritage has been almost completely wiped out.

In 1790 Russian naval forces under the command of admiral Fyodor Ushakov defeated the Turkish fleet at the Battle of Kerch Strait.

Because of its location, from 1821 Kerch developed into an important trade and fishing port. The state museum of ancient times and a number of educational institutions were opened in the city. The ironwork factory was built in 1846 based on a huge iron ore deposit found on Kerch Peninsula.

During the Crimean War the city was devastated by British forces in 1855.

In the late 19th century, mechanical and cement factories were built, and tinned food and tobacco factories were established. By 1900, Kerch was connected to a railroad system, and the fairway of Kerch Strait was deepened and widened. At this time, the population had reached 33,000.

After suffering a decline during the First World War and the Russian Civil War, the city resumed its growth in the late 1920s, with the expansion of various industries, iron ore, and metallurgy in particular, and by 1939 its population had reached 104,500.

Kerch in World War II

On the Eastern Front of World War II from 1941 to 1945, Kerch was the site of heavy fighting between Red Army and Axis forces. After fierce fighting, the city was taken by the Germans in November 1941. On 31 December 1941, the 302nd Mountain Rifle Division recaptured the city following a naval landing operation at Kamysh Burun, to the south of the city, five days earlier. In 1942 the Germans occupied the city again. The Red Army lost over 160,000 men, either killed or taken POW at the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula. On 31 October 1943 another Soviet naval landing operation was launched. Kerch returned to Soviet control on 11 April 1944.

The German invaders killed about 15,000 citizens and deported another 14,000 during their occupation. Evidence of German atrocities in Kerch was presented in the Nuremberg trials. After the war, the city was awarded the title Hero City.

The Adzhimushkay catacombs in the city's suburbs were the site of guerrilla warfare against the occupation. Thousands of soldiers and refugees found shelter inside and were involved in counterattacks. Many of them died underground, including those who died of numerous alleged poison gas attacks. Later, a memorial was established on the site.

Kerch in Independent Ukraine
On 11 November 2007, a powerful storm passed through the city, causing much damage and an ecological disaster as a few ships, including an oil tanker, were shipwrecked and blocked the Kerch Strait.

Russian occupation
As with the other parts of Crimea, Kerch is occupied by Russian forces following the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014.

On 17 October 2018, a student killed 20 people and himself at Kerch Polytechnic College.

Climate
Kerch has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) with cool to cold winters and warm to hot summers.

Administration
The city municipality stretches over a substantial area and includes several separate neighborhoods that are part of the Kerch city: Eltigen (Heroyevskoe), Kamysh-Burun (Arshyntsevo), Port Krym, Adzhimushkai, and Tuzla Island.

Economy
Today Kerch is home to many metallurgists, shipbuilders, and fishermen. It also has a significant tourism sector.

Industry
The largest enterprises in the city are: Construction-materials, food processing, and light industries play a significant role in the city's economy. Kerch is also a fishing fleet base and an important processing centre for numerous fish products.
 * Kerch Metallurgical Works Factory launched in 1900
 * Kamysh-Burun Iron Ore Plant
 * "Zaliv" ("Gulf") shipbuilding factory that produces and repairs tankers and cargo ships.

 * Kerch Aircraft Repair Plant KeARZ
 * KMZ KMK Metallurgical Plant, Kerch east
 * Oil and Gas extraction industry petrochemical and storage
 * Zaliv Shipyard, (Kamysh Burun Zheleznogoroda)
 * Kvartz Quartz Glass Factory Plant KSZ (Glass (various) and optics, optical materials and instruments) (Kerch)
 * PSZ Albatros, PSZ KMPZ Vityaz Priladobudivni (Instruments and Instruments making, Machinery, Engineering)
 * Kamysh Burun Iron Metallurgy Plant
 * KMZ KMTP SV Fregat floating docks yard and ship repair yard
 * KSRZ uvas-trans floating docks yards and ship repair (also lesser Kerch ship repair yards around)

Tourism

Because of its location on the shores of the Azov and Black seas, Kerch became a popular summer resort among people of the former USSR. Also, several mud-cure sources are located near the city. Despite the seaside location, the tourist appeal of Kerch today is limited because of the industrial character of the city and associated pollution. Despite the lack of beaches in the town's area, there are a lot of them at a distance of 20 minutes' travel by bus, train or taxi.

Kerch has a number of impressive architectural and historical monuments. Ancient historical heritage of the city makes it attractive for scientific tourism. The most notable of Kerch's sights are:
 * Site of ancient settlement Pantikapaeum (5th century BC–3rd century AD).
 * Tsarskiy Kurghan (4th century BC) – burial mound for one of the Bosporian kings
 * Church of St. John the Baptist (AD 717)
 * Fortress of Yenikale (18th century)
 * The Great Mithridates Staircase leading on top of the Mount Mithridat, contains 428 footsteps, built in 1833–1840 under the guidance of Italian architect Alexander Digbi
 * Obelisk of Glory on the Mount Mithridat, built after World War II
 * Lapidarium
 * Memorial of heroic guerilla warfare in Adzhimushkay mines
 * Kerch Fortress; restricted area in Soviet times but free to enter in present days. The fortress was built by the Russian military architect Totleben in the middle of 19th century.
 * Sites of ancient settlements Mirmecium, Tiritaka and Nimphei. There are also some settlements which have gone underwater due to earthquakes.
 * So called Demetra's Crypt, a crypt with numerous frescos dated 1st century BC.

Transport

Kerch has a harbour on the Kerch Strait, which makes it a key to the Sea of Azov. It has several railroad terminals and a small airport. The Kerch Strait ferry line across the Kerch Strait was established in 1953, connecting Crimea and the Krasnodar Krai (Port Krym – Port Kavkaz line); (as of November 2009) there are also plans for a Kerch-Poti ferry route. Tavrida Highway work in progress along Kerch railway (two rails) highway (four lanes) bridge to connect Rostov Krasnodar with peninsula.

There are several ports in Kerch, including Kerch Maritime Trading Port, Kerch Maritime Fishing Port, Port Krym (ferry crossing), Kamysh-Burun Port.

The railroad terminals include: Kerch, Kerch I, Kerch Factory, Arshyntsevo, and Krym.

A bus network connects Kerch to other cities in Crimea and Krasnodar Krai.

City transport

Kerch had a tram system that was established in 1935 and destroyed in 1941. A trolleybus system was established in 2004, and has one line.

Crimean Bridge
On 25 April 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed an agreement to build a bridge across the Kerch Strait. In January 2015, with Russia now in control, the contract for the construction of the bridge was awarded to Arkady Rotenberg's S.G.M. Group. In May 2015 construction commenced, and the road section of the bridge was opened to traffic in May 2018. The rail section was opened in 2019, with Russian President Vladimir Putin taking the first train across on 23 December. It was heavily damaged by an explosion on 8 October 2022.

Festivals and celebrations

 * Liberation Day (11 April)
 * Day of Fishermen (the second Sunday of July)
 * Day of the City (the second Saturday of September)

Education

Kerch hosts (2004):
 * 28 schools,
 * 9 institutes and branches of Ukrainian and Russian universities,
 * shipbuilding and polytechnical colleges,
 * medical school,
 * 6 PTU schools,
 * a number of pre-school child institutions

Archaeology

Archaeological digs in Kerch were launched under Russian auspices in the middle of the 19th century. Since then the site of ancient Panticapaeum city on Mount Mithridat has been systematically excavated. Located nearby are several ancient burial mounds (kurgans) and excavated cities. Kerch takes part in UNESCO's "Silk Road" programme.

Treasures and historical findings of Kerch adorn the Lapidarium in Kerch and the collections of major museums around the world. Such as: the Hermitage, the Louvre, the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, the Moscow State Museum of fine arts and many others.

Currently, excavations at ancient fortresses of Kerch are led by scientists from Russia, Ukraine, and Poland.

Notable people

 * Luke of Simferopol, (1877–1961), aka Saint Luke the Blessed Surgeon, surgeon and bishop
 * Pyotr Voykov (1888–1927), a Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet diplomat, assassinated in Warsaw
 * Yuri Terapiano (1892–1980), a Russian poet, writer, translator and literary critic
 * Jia Ruskaja (1902–1970), a Russian dancer and choreographer
 * Paul Soskin (1905–1975), Russian born, British screenwriter and film producer.
 * Boris Khodorov (1922–2014), physiologist and professor of physiology
 * Alime Abdenanova (1924—1944), a Crimean Tatar scout in the Red Army during WWII.
 * Volodia Dubinin (1928–1942), a Pioneer Hero of the Soviet Union
 * Vasily Filippenko (1936–1968), known as The Leningrad Strangler, a Soviet serial killer
 * Anatoliy Kokush (born 1951), a Ukrainian film engineer, businessman and inventor.
 * Yuri Adzhem (born 1953), a Russian former football coach and player with over 330 club caps
 * Sergey Dorenko (1959–2019), Russian TV and radio journalist, hosted a news commentary program, 1999–2000.
 * Mikhail Reva (born 1960), a Ukrainian artist, sculptor, architect and jewelry craftsman
 * Ihor Leonov (born 1967), a Ukrainian former football midfielder with 492 club caps and manager.
 * Masha Efrosinina (born 1979), a Ukrainian TV host and media personality.
 * Ulyana Nesheva (born 1983), a Ukrainian contemporary painter and tattoo artist
 * Valeriya Strakhova (born 1995), a Ukrainian tennis player

Honours
A minor planet 2216 Kerch discovered in 1971 by Soviet astronomer Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova is named after the city.

title: Kerch


text:
Liane Gabora

Liane Gabora is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan. She is known for her theory of the "Origin of the modern mind through conceptual closure," which built on her earlier work on "Autocatalytic closure in a cognitive system: A tentative scenario for the origin of culture."

Career
Gabora has contributed to the study of cultural evolution and evolution of societies, focusing strongly on the role of personal creativity, as opposed to memetic imitation or instruction, in differentiating modern human from prior hominid or modern ape culture. In particular, she seems to follow feminist economists and green economists in making a very strong, indeed pivotal, distinction between creative "enterprise", invention, art or "individual capital" and imitative "meme", rule, social category or "instructional capital".

Gabora's views contrasts with that of memetics and of the strongest social capital theorists (e.g. Karl Marx or Paul Adler) in that she seems to see, as do theorists of intellectual capital, social signals or labels as markers of trust already invested in individual and instructional complexes - rather than as first class actors in themselves. She puts special emphasis on quantifiable archaeological data, such as the number of different arrow points styles, than on contemporary observations to minimize cultural bias and notational bias.

Some of her more recent work raises extremely controversial themes in philosophy of science and strongly challenges the particle physics foundation ontology (e.g. studying the "violation of Bell inequalities in the macroworld"). She is also known for her contributions to the subtle technology field.

"Honing Theory: A Complex Systems Framework for Creativity" is her publication, which suggests that culture evolves through social interaction and exchange between minds that self-organise and modify based on their environment. Creativity arises due to the possibility of uncertainty and disorder, resulting in arousal and a process of novelty and originality until the arousal dissipates. This in turn feeds the cultural norm which in turn feeds further creativity resulting in part the evolution of culture.

Works

 * Gabora, L. (1997) The origin and evolution of culture and creativity. Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission, 1(1).
 * Gabora, L. (1995) Meme and variations: A computer model of cultural evolution. In (L. Nadel & D. Stein, Eds.) 1993 Lectures in Complex Systems. Addison-Wesley.
 * Gabora, L. & Aerts, D. (2002) Contextualizing concepts. Proceedings of the 15th International FLAIRS Conference (Special Track 'Categorization and Concept Representation: Models and Implications'), Pensacola Beach FL, May 14–17, American Association for Artificial Intelligence.
 * Gabora, L. (2002) The beer can theory of creativity. In (P. Bentley & D. Corne, Eds.) Creative Evolutionary Systems. Morgan Kaufmann.
 * Aerts, D., Aerts, S., Broekaert, J., & Gabora, L. (2000) The violation of Bell inequalities in the macroworld. Foundations of Physics, 30 (9). [quant-ph/0007041]
 * Gabora, L. (2010). Revenge of the 'neurds': Characterizing creative thought in terms of the structure and dynamics of human memory. Creativity Research Journal, 22(1), 1-13.
 * Gabora, L. (2017). Honing theory: A complex systems framework for creativity. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, 21(1), 35–88.

title: Liane Gabora


text:
British Sign Language

British Sign Language (BSL) is a sign language used in the United Kingdom and is the first or preferred language among the deaf community in the UK. While private correspondence from William Stokoe hinted at a formal name for the language in 1960, the first usage of the term "British Sign Language" in an academic publication was likely by Aaron Cicourel. Based on the percentage of people who reported 'using British Sign Language at home' on the 2011 Scottish Census, the British Deaf Association estimates there are 151,000 BSL users in the UK, of whom 87,000 are Deaf. By contrast, in the 2011 England and Wales Census 15,000 people living in England and Wales reported themselves using BSL as their main language. People who are not deaf may also use BSL, as hearing relatives of deaf people, sign language interpreters or as a result of other contact with the British Deaf community. The language makes use of space and involves movement of the hands, body, face and head.

Origin
BSL is a creation of the British Deaf community. Unlike home sign, which does not pass between generations, sign languages are shared by a large community of signers.

Records show the existence of a sign language within deaf communities in England as far back as the 15th century. The History of the Syon Monastery at Lisbon and Brentford, published in 1450, contains descriptions of signs — some of which are still in use. The earliest known document describing the use of signing in a legal context mentions John de Orleton, a deaf man assigning his property to a family member in 1324. Another commonly cited event is the marriage ceremony between Thomas Tilsye and Ursula Russel in 1576.

Richard Carew's Survey of Cornwall (1602) includes a vivid description of Edward Bone, a deaf servant, meeting his deaf friend Kempe. Bone had some knowledge of Cornish and was able to lipread, but appeared to prefer signing. Carew described the situation thus:"Somewhat neerre the place of his [Bone's] birth, there dwelt another, so affected, or rather defected, whose name was Kempe: which two, when they chaunced to meete, would use such kinde embracements, such stranfe, often, and earnest tokenings, and such heartie laughtes, and other passionate gestures, that their want of a tongue, seemed rather an hinderance to other conceiving [understanding] them, then to their conceiving one another."John Bulwer, who had an adopted deaf daughter Chirothea Johnson, authored four late-Renaissance texts related to deafness, sign language and the human body: Chirologia (1644), Philocopus (1648), Pathomyotamia (1649) and Anthropometamorphosis (1650). In particular, Chirologia focuses on the meanings of gestures, expressions and body language, and describes signs and gestures in use at the time, some of which resemble signs still in use, while Philocopus explores the use of lipreading by deaf people and the possibility of deaf education, and is dedicated to Bulwer's two deaf brothers.

Another writer of the same time, George Dalgarno, recognised that sign language was unrelated to English. In 1661 he wrote that "The deaf man has no teacher at all and through necessity may put him upon... using signs, yet those have no affinity to the language by which they that are about him do converse among themselves."

Finally, the diarist Samuel Pepys described a conversation between George Downing and a deaf boy in November 1666:"But, above all, there comes in the dumb boy that I knew in Oliver's time, who is mightily acquainted here, and with Downing; and he made strange signs of the fire, and how the King was abroad, and many things they understood, but I could not..."British Sign Language has evolved, as all languages do, from these origins by modification, invention and importation.

The Braidwood schools
Thomas Braidwood, a teacher from Edinburgh, founded 'Braidwood's Academy for the Deaf and Dumb' in 1760, which is believed to be the first school for deaf children in Britain. The school primarily taught oral communication methods, as described by Francis Green - whose son attended the Braidwood school - in the anonymous treatise Vox oculis subjecta. In this account, Green describes how his son Charles would surely develop "a perfect acquaintance with language both oral and written", and how deaf pupils were given "a tolerable general understanding of their own language [English] so as to read, write, and speak it, with ease". Green also describes Braidwood's views of spoken language:"Mr Braidwood hath frequently intimated to me, as an opinion founded upon his experience in this art, that articulate or spoken language hath so great and essential a tendency to confirm and enlarge ideas, above the power of written language, that it is almost impossible for deaf persons, without the use of speech, to be perfect in their ideas."Joseph Watson was trained as a teacher of the deaf under Thomas Braidwood. He eventually left in 1792 to become the headmaster of the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Bermondsey. He described his teaching methods in detail in his book, On the Education of the Deaf and Dumb (1809), where he opposed the use of signed versions of spoken language such as the Signed French used in the Paris school. The book contains lists of vocabulary and plates designed to encourage a child to acquire an understanding of written and spoken language.

International links
Although the Braidwood school focused on speech, it also used an early form of sign language, the combined system, which was the first codification of British Sign Language. The Braidwood school later moved to London and was visited by Abbé Sicard and Laurent Clerc in 1815, at the same time that an American Protestant minister, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, travelled to Europe to research teaching of deaf people.

André-Daniel Laffon de Ladebat, one of the French visitors to the Braidwood school, provided a vivid description of Laurent Clerc's meeting with the deaf children in the bilingual English/French book, A collection of the Most Remarkable Definitions and Answers of Massieu and Clerc, Deaf and Dumb. Laurent Clerc, who was deaf, was overjoyed to find fellow sign language users:"As soon as Clerc beheld this sight [of the children at dinner] his face became animated; he was as agitated as a traveller of sensibility would be on meeting all of a sudden in distant regions, a colony of his own countrymen... Clerc approached them. He made signs and they answered him by signs. The unexpected communication cause a most delicious sensation in them and for us was a scene of expression and sensibility that gave us the most heart-felt satisfaction."The Braidwood schools refused to teach Gallaudet their methods. Gallaudet then travelled to Paris and learned the educational methods of the French Royal Institution for the Deaf, a combination of Old French Sign Language and the signs developed by Abbé de l'Épée. As a consequence American Sign Language (ASL) today has a 60% similarity to modern French Sign Language and is almost unintelligible to users of British Sign Language. Gallaudet went on to establish the American School for the Deaf in 1817, which focused on manual communication and ASL, in contrast to the oral methods used in the UK.

Late 19th - 21st century
Until the 1940s, sign language skills were passed between deaf people without a unified sign language system; many deaf people lived in residential institutions. Signing was actively discouraged in schools by punishment, and deaf education emphasised teaching deaf children to learn to lip read and finger spell, due to the prevailing belief across Europe established in the 1950s that signing was bad. From the 1970s there has been an increasing tolerance and instruction in BSL in schools. The language continues to evolve as older signs such as alms and pawnbroker have fallen out of use and new signs such as internet and laser have been coined. The evolution of the language and its changing level of acceptance meant that older users tend to use more finger spelling while younger ones make use of a wider range of signs.

Paddy Ladd initiated deaf programming on British television in the 1980s and is credited with getting sign language on television and enabling deaf children to be educated in sign.

BSL users campaigned to have BSL recognised on an official level. Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 mandates the provision of interpreters. On 18 March 2003 the UK government formally recognised that BSL is a language in its own right. In 2021, Rosie Cooper introduced the British Sign Language Bill to recognise BSL as an official language, which was backed by the government. After being dormant from June 2021, the bill began moving through Parliament on 28 January 2022, but during a meeting with stakeholders on 7 February, the language of the bill was revealed to have been pared down substantially, disappointing said stakeholders. The British Deaf Association stated that it was 'unhappy' with this removal of language from the bill.

Linguistics
Linguistics is the study of language, including those like BSL that are not carried by sound. In all sign languages the great majority of 'words' (hand gestures) cannot be understood in other sign languages. How one language signs a certain number would be different from how another language signs it. The way sentences are constructed (syntax) differs from sign language to sign language, just as with different spoken languages. British Sign Language is described as a 'spatial language' as it "moves signs in space. "

Phonology
Like many other sign languages, BSL phonology is defined by elements such as handshape, orientation, location, movement, and non-manual features. There are phonological components to sign language that have no meaning alone but work together to create a meaning of a signed word: hand shape, movement, location, orientation and facial expression. The meanings of words differ if one of these components is changed. Signs can be identical in certain components but different in others, giving each a different meaning. Facial expression falls under the nonmanual feature component of phonology. These include "eyebrow height, eye gaze, mouthing, head movement, and torso rotation. "

Grammar
In common with other languages, whether spoken or signed, BSL has its own grammar which govern how phrases are signed. BSL has a particular syntax. One important component of BSL is its use of proforms. A proform is "...any form that stands in the place of, or does the job of, some other form." Sentences are composed of two parts, in order: the subject and the predicate. The subject is the topic of the sentence, while the predicate is the commentary about the subject. Question words are generally at the end of a sentence

BSL uses a topic–comment structure. Topic-comment means that the topic of the signed conversation is first established, followed by an elaboration of the topic, being the 'comment' component. The canonical word order outside of the topic–comment structure is object–subject–verb (OSV), and noun phrases are head-initial.

Relationships with other sign languages
Although the United Kingdom and the United States share English as the predominant spoken language, British Sign Language is quite distinct from American Sign Language (ASL), having only 31% signs identical, or 44% cognate. BSL is also distinct from Irish Sign Language (ISL) (ISG in the ISO system) which is more closely related to French Sign Language (LSF) and ASL.

It is also distinct from Signed English, a manually coded method expressed to represent the English language.

The sign languages used in Australia and New Zealand, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language respectively, evolved largely from 19th century BSL, and all retain the same manual alphabet and grammar and possess similar lexicons. These three languages may technically be considered dialects of a single language (BANZSL) due to their use of the same grammar and manual alphabet and the high degree of lexical sharing (overlap of signs). The term BANZSL was coined by Trevor Johnston and Adam Schembri.

In Australia deaf schools were established by educated deaf people from London, Edinburgh and Dublin. This introduced the London and Edinburgh dialects of BSL to Melbourne and Sydney respectively and Irish Sign Language to Sydney in Roman Catholic schools for the deaf. The language contact post-secondary education between Australian ISL users and 'Australian BSL' users accounts for some of the dialectal differences we see between modern BSL and Auslan. Tertiary education in the US for some deaf Australian adults also accounts for some ASL borrowings found in modern Auslan.

Auslan, BSL and NZSL have 82% of signs identical (using concepts from a Swadesh list). When considering similar or related signs as well as identical, they are 98% cognate. Further information will be available after completion of the BSL corpus, allows for comparison with the Auslan corpus, and the New Zealand Sign Language project. There continues to be language contact between BSL, Auslan and NZSL through migration (deaf people and interpreters), the media (television programmes such as See Hear, Switch, Rush and SignPost are often recorded and shared informally in all three countries) and conferences (in 1999 many deaf British people travelled to Australia for the World Federation of the Deaf Conference, WFD, in Brisbane.)

Makaton, a communication system for people with cognitive impairments or other communication difficulties, was originally developed with signs borrowed from British Sign Language. The sign language used in Sri Lanka is also closely related to BSL despite the oral language not being English, demonstrating variation in distance between sign languages and spoken ones.

Usage
BSL has many regional dialects. Certain signs used in Scotland, for example, may not be understood immediately, or not understood at all, by those in Southern England, or vice versa. Some signs are even more local, occurring only in certain towns or cities (such as the Manchester system of number signs). Likewise, some may go in or out of fashion, or evolve over time, just as terms in oral languages do. Families may have signs unique to them to accommodate for certain situations or to describe an object that may otherwise require fingerspelling.

Many British television channels broadcast programmes with in-vision signing, using BSL, as well as specially made programmes aimed mainly at deaf people such as the BBC's See Hear and Channel 4's VEE-TV.

BBC News broadcasts in-vision signing at 06:45-07:30, 07:45-08:15, and 13:00-13:35 GMT/BST each weekday. 07:00-07:30 on the weekends. BBC Two also broadcasts in-vision signed repeats of the main channel's primetime programmes between 00:00 and 05:00 each weekday and early Saturday mornings. Also provides signing on weekday mornings between 08:00 and 09:00. All BBC channels (excluding BBC One, BBC Alba and BBC Parliament) provide in-vision signing for some of their programmes. In 2022, 10.3% of Channel 4's programming was signed, including popular shows such as Hollyoaks and Gogglebox.

BSL is used in some educational establishments, but is not always the policy for deaf children in some local authority areas. The Let's Sign BSL and fingerspelling graphics are being developed for use in education by deaf educators and tutors and include many of the regional signs referred to above.

In Northern Ireland, there are about 4,500 users of BSL and 1,500 users of Irish Sign Language, an unrelated sign language. A hybrid version, dubbed "Northern Ireland Sign Language" is also used.

In 2019, over 100 signs for scientific terms, including 'deoxyribonucleotide' and 'deoxyribonucleoside', were added to BSL, after being conceived by Liam Mcmulkin, a deaf graduate of the University of Dundee, who had found finger-spelling such words tiresome, during his degree course.

Number of BSL users
In 2016 the British Deaf Association (BDA) says that, based on official statistics, it believes there are 151,000 people who use BSL in the UK, and 87,000 of these are deaf. This figure does not include professional BSL users, interpreters, translators, etc. unless they use BSL at home.

British Sign Language Dictionary
The British Sign Language Dictionary was compiled for the British Deaf Association by the Deaf Studies Research Unit at the University of Durham. It depicts over 1,800 signs through pictures and diagrams, each sign accompanied by definitions, explanations and usage. The signs are ordered not alphabetically, as a dictionary of the English language, but rather according to the phonological characteristics of the language. For example, signs that are based on the "fist" handshape come before signs based on the "open hand" handshape.

The dictionary was edited by David Brien, assisted by a team composed by Mary Brennan, Clark Denmark, Frances Elton, Liz Scott Gibson, Graham Turner and Dorothy Miles, among others.

The Dictionary was published in 1992. The foreword was written by Princess Diana, who was the patron of the BDA.

Learning British Sign Language
British Sign Language can be learnt from formal institutions throughout the UK and three examination systems exist. Courses are provided by community colleges, local centres for deaf people and private organisations. A teaching qualification program was started by the British Deaf Association in 1984 at the University of Durham, called BSL Tutor Training Course, which closed in 1999.

National awarding organisations run training for BSL teachers. Each of these organisations has its own curriculum, teaching materials and resources.

In June 2023, the UK Government launched a consultation for a GCSE in British Sign Language which is planned to begin teaching in schools from September 2025.

Becoming a BSL / English interpreter
There are two qualification routes: via post-graduate studies, or via National Vocational Qualifications. Deaf Studies undergraduate courses with specific streams for sign language interpreting exist at several British universities; post-graduate level interpreting diplomas are also on offer from universities and one private company. Course entry requirements vary from no previous knowledge of BSL to NVQ level 6 BSL (or equivalent).

The qualification process allows interpreters to register with the National Registers of Communication Professionals with Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD), a voluntary regulator. Registrants are asked to self-certify that they have both cleared a DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) check and are covered by professional indemnity insurance. Completing a level 3 BSL language assessment and enrolling on an approved interpreting course allows applications to register as a TSLI (Trainee Sign Language Interpreter). After completing an approved interpreting course, trainees can then apply to achieve RSLI (Registered Sign Language Interpreter) status. RSLIs are currently required by NRCPD to log Continuous Professional Development activities. Post-qualification, specialist training is still considered necessary to work in specific critical domains.

Communication support workers
Communication support workers (CSWs) are professionals who support the communication of deaf students in education at all ages, and deaf people in many areas of work, using British Sign Language and other communication methods such as Sign Supported English. The qualifications and experience of CSWs vary: some are fully qualified interpreters, others are not.

BSL apps
There are currently two well-established BSL language learning apps and web platforms: Bright BSL and Lingvano

Let Sign Shine
Let Sign Shine is a campaign started by Norfolk teenager Jade Chapman to raise the awareness of BSL and attract signatures for a petition for BSL to be taught in schools. The campaign's petition to the Parliament of the United Kingdom attracted support from over four thousand people.

Chapman was nominated for the Bernard Matthews Youth Award 2014 for her work and devotion to raising awareness of the importance of sign language. Chapman won the education award category and was presented with an award by Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington.

Chapman was also awarded an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Radio Norwich 99.9 Local Hero Awards on 7 October 2015. The award ceremony featured a performance by Alesha Dixon.

Having been donated £1,000 from the Bernard Matthews Youth Award, Let Sign Shine used this to start a British Sign Language course at Dereham Neatherd High School.

title: British Sign Language


text:
Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions – excluding gravity) in the universe and classifying all known elementary particles. It was developed in stages throughout the latter half of the 20th century, through the work of many scientists worldwide, with the current formulation being finalized in the mid-1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, proof of the top quark (1995), the tau neutrino (2000), and the Higgs boson (2012) have added further credence to the Standard Model. In addition, the Standard Model has predicted various properties of weak neutral currents and the W and Z bosons with great accuracy.

Although the Standard Model is believed to be theoretically self-consistent and has demonstrated some success in providing experimental predictions, it leaves some physical phenomena unexplained and so falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions. For example, it does not fully explain baryon asymmetry, incorporate the full theory of gravitation as described by general relativity, or account for the universe's accelerating expansion as possibly described by dark energy. The model does not contain any viable dark matter particle that possesses all of the required properties deduced from observational cosmology. It also does not incorporate neutrino oscillations and their non-zero masses.

The development of the Standard Model was driven by theoretical and experimental particle physicists alike. The Standard Model is a paradigm of a quantum field theory for theorists, exhibiting a wide range of phenomena, including spontaneous symmetry breaking, anomalies, and non-perturbative behavior. It is used as a basis for building more exotic models that incorporate hypothetical particles, extra dimensions, and elaborate symmetries (such as supersymmetry) to explain experimental results at variance with the Standard Model, such as the existence of dark matter and neutrino oscillations.

Historical background
In 1954, Yang Chen-Ning and Robert Mills extended the concept of gauge theory for abelian groups, e.g. quantum electrodynamics, to nonabelian groups to provide an explanation for strong interactions. In 1957, Chien-Shiung Wu demonstrated parity was not conserved in the weak interaction. In 1961, Sheldon Glashow combined the electromagnetic and weak interactions. In 1967 Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam incorporated the Higgs mechanism  into Glashow's electroweak interaction, giving it its modern form.

The Higgs mechanism is believed to give rise to the masses of all the elementary particles in the Standard Model. This includes the masses of the W and Z bosons, and the masses of the fermions, i.e. the quarks and leptons.

After the neutral weak currents caused by Z boson exchange were discovered at CERN in 1973,   the electroweak theory became widely accepted and Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering it. The W± and Z0 bosons were discovered experimentally in 1983; and the ratio of their masses was found to be as the Standard Model predicted.

The theory of the strong interaction (i.e. quantum chromodynamics, QCD), to which many contributed, acquired its modern form in 1973–74 when asymptotic freedom was proposed (a development which made QCD the main focus of theoretical research) and experiments confirmed that the hadrons were composed of fractionally charged quarks.

The term "Standard Model" was introduced by Abraham Pais and Sam Treiman in 1975, with reference to the electroweak theory with four quarks. Steven Weinberg, has since claimed priority, explaining that he chose the term Standard Model out of a sense of modesty   and used it in 1973 during a talk in Aix-en-Provence in France.

Particle content
The Standard Model includes members of several classes of elementary particles, which in turn can be distinguished by other characteristics, such as color charge.

All particles can be summarized as follows:

Fermions
The Standard Model includes 12 elementary particles of spin 1⁄2, known as fermions. Fermions respect the Pauli exclusion principle, meaning that two identical fermions cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state in the same atom. Each fermion has a corresponding antiparticle, which are particles that have corresponding properties with the exception of opposite charges. Fermions are classified based on how they interact, which is determined by the charges they carry, into two groups: quarks and leptons. Within each group, pairs of particles that exhibit similar physical behaviors are then grouped into generations (see the table). Each member of a generation has a greater mass than the corresponding particle of generations prior. Thus, there are three generations of quarks and leptons. As first-generation particles do not decay, they comprise all of ordinary (baryonic) matter. Specifically, all atoms consist of electrons orbiting around the atomic nucleus, ultimately constituted of up and down quarks. On the other hand, second- and third-generation charged particles decay with very short half-lives and can only be observed in high-energy environments. Neutrinos of all generations also do not decay, and pervade the universe, but rarely interact with baryonic matter.

There are six quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, and bottom. Quarks carry color charge, and hence interact via the strong interaction. The color confinement phenomenon results in quarks being strongly bound together such that they form color-neutral composite particles called hadrons; quarks cannot individually exist and must always bind with other quarks. Hadrons can contain either a quark-antiquark pair (mesons) or three quarks (baryons). The lightest baryons are the nucleons: the proton and neutron. Quarks also carry electric charge and weak isospin, and thus interact with other fermions through electromagnetism and weak interaction. The six leptons consist of the electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau, and tau neutrino. The leptons do not carry color charge, and do not respond to strong interaction. The main leptons carry an electric charge of -1 e, while the three neutrinos carry a neutral electric charge. Thus, the neutrinos' motion are only influenced by weak interaction and gravity, making them difficult to observe.

Gauge bosons
[[File:Standard Model – All Feynman diagram vertices.svg|upright=1.5|thumb|right|Interactions in the Standard Model. All Feynman diagrams in the model are built from combinations of these vertices. q is any quark, g is a gluon,

X is any charged particle, γ is a photon, f is any fermion, m is any particle with mass (with the possible exception of the neutrinos), mB is any boson with mass.

In diagrams with multiple particle labels separated by / one particle label is chosen. In diagrams with particle labels separated by | the labels must be chosen in the same order. For example, in the four boson electroweak case the valid diagrams are WWWW, WWZZ, WWγγ, WWZγ. The conjugate of each listed vertex (reversing the direction of arrows) is also allowed. ]]

The Standard Model includes 4 kinds of gauge bosons of spin 1, with bosons being quantum particles containing an integer spin. The gauge bosons are defined as force carriers, as they are responsible for mediating the fundamental interactions. The Standard Model explains the four fundamental forces as arising from the interactions, with fermions exchanging virtual force carrier particles, thus mediating the forces. At a macroscopic scale, this manifests as a force. As a result, they do not follow the Pauli exclusion principle that constrains fermions; bosons do not have a theoretical limit on their spatial density. The types of gauge bosons are described below. The Feynman diagram calculations, which are a graphical representation of the perturbation theory approximation, invoke "force mediating particles", and when applied to analyze high-energy scattering experiments are in reasonable agreement with the data. However, perturbation theory (and with it the concept of a "force-mediating particle") fails in other situations. These include low-energy quantum chromodynamics, bound states, and solitons. The interactions between all the particles described by the Standard Model are summarized by the diagrams on the right of this section.
 * Electromagnetism: Photons mediate the electromagnetic force, responsible for interactions between electrically charged particles. The photon is massless and is described by the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED).
 * Strong Interactions: Gluons mediate the strong interactions, which binds quarks to each other by influencing the color charge, with the interactions being described in the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). They have no mass, and there are eight distinct gluons, with each being denoted through a color-anticolor charge combination (e.g. red–antigreen). As gluons have an effective color charge, they can also interact amongst themselves.
 * Weak Interactions: The, , and gauge bosons mediate the weak interactions between all fermions, being responsible for radioactivity. They contain mass, with the  having more mass than the . The weak interactions involving the  act only on left-handed particles and right-handed antiparticles. The  carries an electric charge of +1 and −1 and couples to the electromagnetic interaction. The electrically neutral  boson interacts with both left-handed particles and right-handed antiparticles. These three gauge bosons along with the photons are grouped together, as collectively mediating the electroweak interaction.
 * Gravity: It is currently unexplained in the Standard Model, as the hypothetical mediating particle graviton has been proposed, but not observed. This is due to the incompatibility of quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity, regarded as being the best explanation for gravity. In general relativity, gravity is explained as being the geometric curving of spacetime.

Higgs boson
The Higgs particle is a massive scalar elementary particle theorized by Peter Higgs (and others) in 1964, when he showed that Goldstone's 1962 theorem (generic continuous symmetry, which is spontaneously broken) provides a third polarisation of a massive vector field. Hence, Goldstone's original scalar doublet, the massive spin-zero particle, was proposed as the Higgs boson, and is a key building block in the Standard Model. It has no intrinsic spin, and for that reason is classified as a boson with spin-0.

The Higgs boson plays a unique role in the Standard Model, by explaining why the other elementary particles, except the photon and gluon, are massive. In particular, the Higgs boson explains why the photon has no mass, while the W and Z bosons are very heavy. Elementary-particle masses and the differences between electromagnetism (mediated by the photon) and the weak force (mediated by the W and Z bosons) are critical to many aspects of the structure of microscopic (and hence macroscopic) matter. In electroweak theory, the Higgs boson generates the masses of the leptons (electron, muon, and tau) and quarks. As the Higgs boson is massive, it must interact with itself.

Because the Higgs boson is a very massive particle and also decays almost immediately when created, only a very high-energy particle accelerator can observe and record it. Experiments to confirm and determine the nature of the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN began in early 2010 and were performed at Fermilab's Tevatron until its closure in late 2011. Mathematical consistency of the Standard Model requires that any mechanism capable of generating the masses of elementary particles must become visible at energies above $1.4 TeV$; therefore, the LHC (designed to collide two $7 TeV$ proton beams) was built to answer the question of whether the Higgs boson actually exists.

On 4 July 2012, two of the experiments at the LHC (ATLAS and CMS) both reported independently that they had found a new particle with a mass of about $125 GeV/c2$ (about 133 proton masses, on the order of $kg$), which is "consistent with the Higgs boson". On 13 March 2013, it was confirmed to be the searched-for Higgs boson.

Construction of the Standard Model Lagrangian
Technically, quantum field theory provides the mathematical framework for the Standard Model, in which a Lagrangian controls the dynamics and kinematics of the theory. Each kind of particle is described in terms of a dynamical field that pervades space-time. The construction of the Standard Model proceeds following the modern method of constructing most field theories: by first postulating a set of symmetries of the system, and then by writing down the most general renormalizable Lagrangian from its particle (field) content that observes these symmetries.

The global Poincaré symmetry is postulated for all relativistic quantum field theories. It consists of the familiar translational symmetry, rotational symmetry and the inertial reference frame invariance central to the theory of special relativity. The local SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) gauge symmetry is an internal symmetry that essentially defines the Standard Model. Roughly, the three factors of the gauge symmetry give rise to the three fundamental interactions. The fields fall into different representations of the various symmetry groups of the Standard Model (see table). Upon writing the most general Lagrangian, one finds that the dynamics depends on 19 parameters, whose numerical values are established by experiment. The parameters are summarized in the table (made visible by clicking "show") above.

Quantum chromodynamics sector
The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) sector defines the interactions between quarks and gluons, which is a Yang–Mills gauge theory with SU(3) symmetry, generated by $$T^a = \lambda^a/2$$. Since leptons do not interact with gluons, they are not affected by this sector. The Dirac Lagrangian of the quarks coupled to the gluon fields is given by

$$\mathcal{L}_\text{QCD} = \overline{\psi} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} \psi - \frac{1}{4} G^a_{\mu\nu} G^{\mu\nu}_a,$$

where $$\psi$$ is a three component column vector of Dirac Spinors, each element of which refers to a quark field with a specific color charge (i.e. red, blue, and green) and summation over flavor (i.e. up, down, strange, etc.) is implied.

The gauge covariant derivative of QCD is defined by $$D_{\mu} \equiv \partial_\mu - i g_s\frac{1}{2}\lambda^a G_\mu^a$$, where
 * $\overline{MS}$ are the Dirac matrices,
 * $\overline{MS}$ is the 8-component ($$a = 1, 2, \dots, 8$$) SU(3) gauge field,
 * $\overline{MS}$ are the 3 × 3 Gell-Mann matrices, generators of the SU(3) color group,
 * $\overline{MS}$ represents the gluon field strength tensor, and
 * $\overline{MS}$ is the strong coupling constant.

The QCD Lagrangian is invariant under local SU(3) gauge transformations; i.e., transformations of the form $$\psi \rightarrow \psi' = U\psi$$, where $$U = e^{-i g_s\lambda^a \phi^{a}(x)}$$ is $$3\times 3$$ unitary matrix with determinant 1, making it a member of the group SU(3), and $$\phi^{a}(x)$$ is an arbitrary function of spacetime.

Electroweak sector
The electroweak sector is a Yang–Mills gauge theory with the symmetry group U(1) × SU(2)L,

$$\mathcal{L}_\text{EW} = \overline{Q}_{Lj} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} Q_{Lj} + \overline{u}_{Rj} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} u_{Rj} + \overline{d}_{Rj} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} d_{Rj} + \overline{\ell}_{Lj} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} \ell_{Lj} + \overline{e}_{Rj} i\gamma^\mu D_{\mu} e_{Rj} - \tfrac{1}{4} W_a^{\mu\nu} W_{\mu\nu}^a - \tfrac{1}{4} B^{\mu\nu} B_{\mu\nu}, $$

where the subscript $$j$$ sums over the three generations of fermions; $$Q_L, u_R$$, and $$d_R$$ are the left-handed doublet, right-handed singlet up type, and right handed singlet down type quark fields; and $$\ell_L$$ and $$e_R$$ are the left-handed doublet and right-handed singlet lepton fields.

The electroweak gauge covariant derivative is defined as $$D_\mu \equiv \partial_\mu - ig' \tfrac12 Y_\text{W} B_\mu - ig \tfrac{1}{2} \vec\tau_\text{L} \vec W_\mu$$, where
 * $\overline{MS}$ is the U(1) gauge field,
 * $Y_{W}$ is the weak hypercharge – the generator of the U(1) group,
 * $W_{μ}$ is the 3-component SU(2) gauge field,
 * $τ_{L}$ are the Pauli matrices – infinitesimal generators of the SU(2) group – with subscript L to indicate that they only act on left-chiral fermions,
 * $\overline{MS}$ and $\overline{MS}$ are the U(1) and SU(2) coupling constants respectively,
 * $$W^{a\mu\nu}$$ ($$a = 1, 2, 3$$) and $$B^{\mu\nu}$$ are the field strength tensors for the weak isospin and weak hypercharge fields.

Notice that the addition of fermion mass terms into the electroweak Lagrangian is forbidden, since terms of the form $$m\overline\psi\psi$$ do not respect U(1) × SU(2)L gauge invariance. Neither is it possible to add explicit mass terms for the U(1) and SU(2) gauge fields. The Higgs mechanism is responsible for the generation of the gauge boson masses, and the fermion masses result from Yukawa-type interactions with the Higgs field.

Higgs sector
In the Standard Model, the Higgs field is an $$\operatorname{SU}(2)_\text{L}$$ doublet of complex scalar fields with four degrees of freedom:

$$ \varphi = \begin{pmatrix} \varphi^+ \\ \varphi^0 \end{pmatrix} = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \begin{pmatrix} \varphi_1 + i\varphi_2 \\ \varphi_3 + i\varphi_4 \end{pmatrix}, $$ where the superscripts + and 0 indicate the electric charge $$Q$$ of the components. The weak hypercharge $$Y_\text{W}$$ of both components is 1. Before symmetry breaking, the Higgs Lagrangian is $$ \mathcal{L}_\text{H} = \left(D_{\mu}\varphi\right)^{\dagger} \left(D^{\mu}\varphi \right) - V(\varphi),$$ where $$D_{\mu}$$ is the electroweak gauge covariant derivative defined above and $$V(\varphi)$$ is the potential of the Higgs field. The square of the covariant derivative leads to three and four point interactions between the electroweak gauge fields $$W^{a}_{\mu}$$ and $$B_{\mu}$$ and the scalar field $$\varphi$$. The scalar potential is given by $$ V(\varphi) = -\mu^2\varphi^{\dagger}\varphi + \lambda \left( \varphi^{\dagger}\varphi \right)^2, $$ where $$\mu^2>0$$, so that $$\varphi$$ acquires a non-zero Vacuum expectation value, which generates masses for the Electroweak gauge fields (the Higgs' mechanism), and $$\lambda>0$$, so that the potential is bounded from below. The quartic term describes self-interactions of the scalar field $$\varphi$$.

The minimum of the potential is degenerate with an infinite number of equivalent ground state solutions, which occurs when $$\varphi^{\dagger}\varphi = \tfrac{\mu^2}{2\lambda}$$. It is possible to perform a gauge transformation on $$\varphi$$ such that the ground state is transformed to a basis where $$\varphi_1 = \varphi_2 = \varphi_4 = 0$$ and $$\varphi_3 = \tfrac{\mu}{\sqrt{\lambda}} \equiv v $$. This breaks the symmetry of the ground state. The expectation value of $$\varphi$$ now becomes $$ \langle \varphi \rangle = \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}} \begin{pmatrix} 0 \\ v \end{pmatrix},$$ where $$v$$ has units of mass and sets the scale of electroweak physics. This is the only dimensional parameter of the Standard Model and has a measured value of ~$125.09 GeV$.

After symmetry breaking, the masses of the $$\text{W}$$ and $$\text{Z}$$ are given by $$m_\text{W}=\frac{1}{2}gv$$ and $$ m_\text{Z}=\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{g^2+g'^2}v$$, which can be viewed as predictions of the theory. The photon remains massless. The mass of the Higgs Boson is $$m_\text{H}=\sqrt{2\mu^2}=\sqrt{2\lambda}v$$. Since $$\mu$$ and $$\lambda$$ are free parameters, the Higgs' mass could not be predicted beforehand and had to be determined experimentally.

Yukawa sector
The Yukawa interaction terms are:

$$\mathcal{L}_\text{Yukawa} = (Y_\text{u})_{mn}(\bar{Q}_\text{L})_m \tilde{\varphi}(u_\text{R})_n + (Y_\text{d})_{mn}(\bar{Q}_\text{L})_m \varphi(d_\text{R})_n + (Y_\text{e})_{mn}(\bar{\ell}_\text{L})_m {\varphi}(e_\text{R})_n + \mathrm{h.c.} $$

where $$Y_\text{u}$$, $$Y_\text{d}$$, and $$Y_\text{e}$$ are $3 × 3$ matrices of Yukawa couplings, with the $γ$ term giving the coupling of the generations $Ga μ$ and $λa$, and h.c. means Hermitian conjugate of preceding terms. The fields $$Q_\text{L}$$ and $$\ell_\text{L}$$ are left-handed quark and lepton doublets. Likewise, $$u_\text{R}, d_\text{R}$$ and $$e_\text{R}$$ are right-handed up-type quark, down-type quark, and lepton singlets. Finally $$\varphi$$ is the Higgs doublet and $$\tilde{\varphi} = i\tau_2\varphi^{*}$$ is its charge conjugate state.

The Yukawa terms are invariant under the $$\operatorname{SU}(2)_\text{L} \times \operatorname{U}(1)_\text{Y}$$ gauge symmetry of the Standard Model and generate masses for all fermions after spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Fundamental interactions
The Standard Model describes three of the four fundamental interactions in nature; only gravity remains unexplained. In the Standard Model, such an interaction is described as an exchange of bosons between the objects affected, such as a photon for the electromagnetic force and a gluon for the strong interaction. Those particles are called force carriers or messenger particles.

Gravity

Despite being perhaps the most familiar fundamental interaction, gravity is not described by the Standard Model, due to contradictions that arise when combining general relativity, the modern theory of gravity, and quantum mechanics. However, gravity is so weak at microscopic scales, that it is essentially unmeasurable. The graviton is postulated to be the mediating particle, but has not yet been proved to exist.

Electromagnetism
Electromagnetism is the only long-range force in the Standard Model. It is mediated by photons and couples to electric charge. Electromagnetism is responsible for a wide range of phenomena including atomic electron shell structure, chemical bonds, electric circuits and electronics. Electromagnetic interactions in the Standard Model are described by quantum electrodynamics.

Weak nuclear force
The weak interaction is responsible for various forms of particle decay, such as beta decay. It is weak and short-range, due to the fact that the weak mediating particles, W and Z bosons, have mass. W bosons have electric charge and mediate interactions that change the particle type (referred to as flavour) and charge. Interactions mediated by W bosons are charged current interactions. Z bosons are neutral and mediate neutral current interactions, which do not change particle flavour. Thus Z bosons are similar to the photon, aside from them being massive and interacting with the neutrino. The weak interaction is also the only interaction to violate parity and CP. Parity violation is maximal for charged current interactions, since the W boson interacts exclusively with left-handed fermions and right-handed antifermions.

In the Standard Model, the weak force is understood in terms of the electroweak theory, which states that the weak and electromagnetic interactions become united into a single electroweak interaction at high energies.

Strong nuclear force
The strong nuclear force is responsible for hadronic and nuclear binding. It is mediated by gluons, which couple to color charge. Since gluons themselves have color charge, the strong force exhibits confinement and asymptotic freedom. Confinement means that only color-neutral particles can exist in isolation, therefore quarks can only exist in hadrons and never in isolation, at low energies. Asymptotic freedom means that the strong force becomes weaker, as the energy scale increases. The strong force overpowers the electrostatic repulsion of protons and quarks in nuclei and hadrons respectively, at their respective scales.

While quarks are bound in hadrons by the fundamental strong interaction, which is mediated by gluons, nucleons are bound by an emergent phenomenon termed the residual strong force or nuclear force. This interaction is mediated by mesons, such as the pion. The color charges inside the nucleon cancel out, meaning most of the gluon and quark fields cancel out outside of the nucleon. However, some residue is "leaked", which appears as the exchange of virtual mesons, that causes the attractive force between nucleons. The (fundamental) strong interaction is described by quantum chromodynamics, which is a component of the Standard Model.

Tests and predictions
The Standard Model predicted the existence of the W and Z bosons, gluon, top quark and charm quark, and predicted many of their properties before these particles were observed. The predictions were experimentally confirmed with good precision.

The Standard Model also predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, which was found in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider, the final fundamental particle predicted by the Standard Model to be experimentally confirmed.

Challenges
Self-consistency of the Standard Model (currently formulated as a non-abelian gauge theory quantized through path-integrals) has not been mathematically proved. While regularized versions useful for approximate computations (for example lattice gauge theory) exist, it is not known whether they converge (in the sense of S-matrix elements) in the limit that the regulator is removed. A key question related to the consistency is the Yang–Mills existence and mass gap problem.

Experiments indicate that neutrinos have mass, which the classic Standard Model did not allow. To accommodate this finding, the classic Standard Model can be modified to include neutrino mass, although it is not obvious exactly how this should be done.

If one insists on using only Standard Model particles, this can be achieved by adding a non-renormalizable interaction of leptons with the Higgs boson. On a fundamental level, such an interaction emerges in the seesaw mechanism where heavy right-handed neutrinos are added to the theory. This is natural in the left-right symmetric extension of the Standard Model and in certain grand unified theories. As long as new physics appears below or around 1014 GeV, the neutrino masses can be of the right order of magnitude.

Theoretical and experimental research has attempted to extend the Standard Model into a unified field theory or a theory of everything, a complete theory explaining all physical phenomena including constants. Inadequacies of the Standard Model that motivate such research include:
 * The model does not explain gravitation, although physical confirmation of a theoretical particle known as a graviton would account for it to a degree. Though it addresses strong and electroweak interactions, the Standard Model does not consistently explain the canonical theory of gravitation, general relativity, in terms of quantum field theory. The reason for this is, among other things, that quantum field theories of gravity generally break down before reaching the Planck scale. As a consequence, we have no reliable theory for the very early universe.
 * Some physicists consider it to be ad hoc and inelegant, requiring 19 numerical constants whose values are unrelated and arbitrary. Although the Standard Model, as it now stands, can explain why neutrinos have masses, the specifics of neutrino mass are still unclear. It is believed that explaining neutrino mass will require an additional 7 or 8 constants, which are also arbitrary parameters.
 * The Higgs mechanism gives rise to the hierarchy problem if some new physics (coupled to the Higgs) is present at high energy scales. In these cases, in order for the weak scale to be much smaller than the Planck scale, severe fine tuning of the parameters is required; there are, however, other scenarios that include quantum gravity in which such fine tuning can be avoided. There are also issues of quantum triviality, which suggests that it may not be possible to create a consistent quantum field theory involving elementary scalar particles.
 * The model is inconsistent with the emerging Lambda-CDM model of cosmology. Contentions include the absence of an explanation in the Standard Model of particle physics for the observed amount of cold dark matter (CDM) and its contributions to dark energy, which are many orders of magnitude too large. It is also difficult to accommodate the observed predominance of matter over antimatter (matter/antimatter asymmetry). The isotropy and homogeneity of the visible universe over large distances seems to require a mechanism like cosmic inflation, which would also constitute an extension of the Standard Model.

Currently, no proposed theory of everything has been widely accepted or verified.

Advanced textbooks

 * Highlights the gauge theory aspects of the Standard Model.
 * Highlights dynamical and phenomenological aspects of the Standard Model.
 * 920 pages.
 * 952 pages.
 * 670 pages. Highlights group-theoretical aspects of the Standard Model.
 * 670 pages. Highlights group-theoretical aspects of the Standard Model.

title: Standard Model