Chi (unit)

The chi is a traditional Chinese unit of length. Although it is often translated as the "Chinese foot", its length was originally derived from the length of the human forearm, similar to the ancient cubit. It first appeared during China's Shang dynasty approximately 3000 years ago and has since been adopted by other East Asian cultures such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Its present value is standardized around a third of a meter, although the exact standards vary among the mainland of the People's Republic of China, its special administrative region of Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

In its ancient and modern forms, the chi is divided into 10 smaller units known as cun (the "Chinese inch") and 10 chi together form one zhang.

Modern values

In People's Republic of China chi has been defined since 1984 as exactly 1/3 of a meter, i.e., 33¹⁄₃ cm (approximately 1.094 ft). However, in the Hong Kong SAR the corresponding unit, pronounced chek in Cantonese, is defined as exactly 0.371475 m (exactly 14⁵⁄₈ in). The two units are sometimes referred to in English as "Chinese foot" and "Hong Kong foot".

Chi

Chi may refer to:

Greek

Chinese

Igbo

Japanese

Other

In science

In fiction and popular culture

Chi (magazine)

Chi (Italian for "Who") is an Italian weekly gossip magazine geared towards a female viewership published in Milan, Italy.

History and profile

Chi was established in 1995. The magazine, published weekly, is based in Segrate, Milan, Italy and its publisher is Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. The company is headed by Marina Berlusconi, Silvio Berlusconi’s older daughter. Alfonso Signorini is the editor of the weekly.

In 2004 the circulation of Chi was 524,482 copies. The magazine had a circulation of 503,984 copies in 2007. In 2010 its circulation was 403,599 copies.

Photo of Princess Diana

The magazine came under criticism for publishing a picture of Princess Diana, taken as she was dying. The photo, which is black-and-white, depicts Diana receiving oxygen in the wreckage of the vehicle in which she died on 31 August 1997. The picture, which was also run with black bars across the Princess's face in the British newspaper The Sun, was taken from the book Lady Diana : L'enquete criminelle by Jean-Michel Caradec'h. Despite the criticism, the editor of the magazine defended their decision to publish it.

Chi (mythology)

Chi (Chinese: 螭; pinyin: chī; Wade–Giles: ch'ih) means either "a hornless dragon" or "a mountain demon" (namely, chimei 螭魅) in Chinese mythology. Hornless dragons were a common motif in ancient Chinese art, and the chiwen 螭吻 (lit. "hornless-dragon mouth") was an Imperial roof decoration in traditional Chinese architecture.

Word

In Modern Standard Chinese usage, chi 螭 "hornless dragon" occurs in words such as:

Note that the following discussion of the word chi 螭's written forms and etymological origins requires using some jargon linguistics and sinology. See also 9 sons of the dragon.

Environment variable

Environment variables are a set of dynamic named values that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer.

They are part of the environment in which a process runs. For example, a running process can query the value of the TEMP environment variable to discover a suitable location to store temporary files, or the HOME or USERPROFILE variable to find the directory structure owned by the user running the process.

They were introduced in their modern form in 1979 with Version 7 Unix, so are included in all Unix operating system flavors and variants from that point onward including Linux and OS X. From PC DOS 2.0 in 1982, all succeeding Microsoft operating systems including Microsoft Windows, and OS/2 also have included them as a feature, although with somewhat different syntax, usage and standard variable names.

Details

In all Unix and Unix-like systems, each process has its own separate set of environment variables. By default, when a process is created, it inherits a duplicate environment of its parent process, except for explicit changes made by the parent when it creates the child. At the API level, these changes must be done between running fork and exec. Alternatively, from command shells such as bash, a user can change environment variables for a particular command invocation by indirectly invoking it via env or using the ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE=VALUE <command> notation. All Unix operating system flavors, DOS, and Windows have environment variables; however, they do not all use the same variable names. A running program can access the values of environment variables for configuration purposes.

Length (phonetics)

In phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that have distinctively extended duration compared with other sounds. There are long vowels as well as long consonants (the latter are often called geminates).

Many languages do not have distinctive length. Among the languages that have distinctive length, there are only a few that have both distinctive vowel length and distinctive consonant length. It is more common that there is only one or that they depend on each other.

The languages that distinguish between different lengths have usually long and short sounds. According to some linguists, Estonian and some Sami languages have three phonemic (meaning-distinguishing) lengths for consonants and vowels. Some Low German/Low Saxon varieties in the vicinity of Hamburg and some Moselle Franconian and Ripuiarian Franconian varieties do, too.

Strictly speaking, a pair of a long sound and a short sound should be identical except for their length. In certain languages, however, there are pairs of phonemes that are traditionally considered to be long-short pairs even though they differ not only in length, but also in quality, for instance English "long e" which is /iː/ (as in feet /fiːt/) vs. "short i" which is /ɪ/ (as in fit /fɪt/) or German "long e" which is /eː/ (as in Beet /beːt/ 'garden bed') vs. "short e" which is /ɛ/ (as in Bett /bɛt/ 'sleeping bed'). Also, tonal contour may reinforce the length, as in Estonian, where the over-long length is concomitant with a tonal variation resembling tonal stress marking.

Horse length

A horse length, or simply length, is a unit of measurement for the length of a horse from nose to tail, approximately 8 feet (2.4 m).

Use in horse racing

The length is commonly used in Thoroughbred horse racing, where it describes the distance between horses in a race. Horses may be described as winning by several lengths, as in the notable example of Secretariat, who won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths (248 feet (76 m)). More often, winning distances are merely a fraction of a length, such as half a length.

Other measures

Distances smaller than that are similarly described in reference to the equine body with terms such as a "neck", and a "head", a "short head" or "nose", the smallest possible named advantage by which a horse can win. In the United Kingdom and Ireland a margin of more than 30 lengths is described as a "distance". In France the term "short neck" is used for a margin intermediate between a head and a neck. Harness race finishing margins are typically measured in meters.