CBC is also a widely used acronym over IRC, ICQ and other chatting networks. It stands for Canadian Born Chinese where the "Canadian" and "Chinese" are interchangeable as YMMV.

It's a Canadian specific term that is synonymous to Banana (i.e., Yellow outside, White inside).

Personally, I don't like this term (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I am one of these creatures), because it almost always has a negative connotation attached to it (even though it has no reason to). Why? Only, if not most of the time, Non-CBC (in other words, True-born Chinese) use this term to discriminate the Bananas from the rest of the basket.

Some CBCs don't mind and even promote this term (I think UBC has some kind of mob named after this).

You may also parallel a close relative of the CBC, the ABC.

In cryptography, CBC refers to Cipher Block Chaining. It is an operation mode for block ciphers.

Normally, block cipher takes a block of plaintext and transforms it into ciphertext in precisely one way. (This is called ECB, Electronic Codebook mode). This mode may be vulnerable because patterns in plaintext are still visible (big blocks of whitespace may look kind of distinctive, for example).

CBC takes the previous encrypted block (or IV if there's no previous block), and XORs it with the next plaintext block, producing a new block. This makes the output look much more random.

This is only one of the many cipher modes that's based on feedback and the reversibility of XOR operation.

The CBC (Complete Blood Count, known as FBC/Full Blood Count in the UK) test is a test that measures the quantity of red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, usually platelets, the fraction of blood comprised of red blood cells (hematocrit), the mean corpuscular volume of the red blood cells, the mean corpuscular hemoglobin, and the mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration. These tests are performed on the blood sample by a machine known as a hematology analyzer. The test can be performed in a few minutes, although some circumstances will cause the machine to call for a review by a human. Emergency tests are generally reported back within an hour, routine tests can take from 3-6 hours or longer if the sample must be sent to a central location for testing. The test results can be altered by many medications, by pregnancy, excercise, stress, smoking, and by mistreatment of the blood sample.

This test can be used to check for problems with fluid levels (such as those caused by dehydration and blood loss), abnormalities in blood cells, acute or chronic infections, allergies, clotting problems, congenital heart disease, cor pulmonale, pulmonary fibrosis, polycythemia vera, kidney disease, bone marrow failure, erythropoietin deficiency, hemolysis, leukemia, multiple myeloma, malnutrition, cytotoxins, autoimmune/collagen-vascular diseases, liver/spleen damage, radiation exposure, infectious or inflammatory diseases, stress, tissue damage, rheumatoid arthritis, malaria, sickle-cell anemia, and low oxygen tension. This versatility makes this test very useful to medical professionals.


Thanks to eliserh for the UK name info.
Sources: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003642.htm http://kidshealth.org/parent/system/medical/labtest4.html http://www.healthwise.org/kbase_hosp/kbase/topic/medtest/hw4260/descrip.htm

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