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Nigerians once trusted power cables to be safe and compliant with international standards. Today, however, the Nigerian market is rife with substandard cables, which may overheat, shoot out sparks, and cause fires. Power cables have been transformed from commodities with stable and precisely defined properties into entangled objects that can only be known through the actors accompanying them. Marketization scholarship has conventionally focused on efforts and investments to disentangle things from their networks of connections, affording less attention to the specifics of how entanglements are produced. This article examines the role of intermediation in creating entanglements and undermining market orders. The analysis first identifies intermediaries that endeavor to translate the market logic into concrete realities in Nigeria. The second and main part of the analysis draws upon data from ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria and China to assess how intermediaries destabilized the commodity of cables by forging new connections between traders and producers and by enabling inferior products to enter the market. The article proposes intermediation as a meso-level concept for connecting concrete and empirically observable events to theories of marketization. The approach moves marketization scholarship forward and away from its oft-vague operationalizations, while also suggesting new avenues for research on intermediation beyond the study of markets.

In this paper two typical arrangements of underground single-core high voltage three-phase power cables (flat and trefoil protected by PVC pipes) inside a closed shield of three different materials (low-carbon steel, non-oriented grain steel and aluminium) are analysed. The shield has two components: a U-shaped base and a flat plate (cover) located on top of the base. Whereas most of previous papers on this subject only dealt with the degree of mitigation obtained with each material, this paper, in addition to also addressing this issue, mainly focusses on the effect that electromagnetic losses induced in the shield have on the ampacity of the cable and the cost involved (material and losses). To obtain the numerical results, a high number of simulations by a well-known commercial finite element method software (COMSOL Multiphysics) have been performed. The results obtained in the numerous cases analysed are widely commented and the solutions that enable an important mitigation with no current derating and at a comparatively low cost are highlighted. ; This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science & Innovation under grant ENE2010-18867 and by the regional Government of Andalucia under grant P09-TEP-5170. ; Pino López, JCD.; Cruz Romero, P.; Serrano Iribarnegaray, L. (2013). Impact of electromagnetic losses in closed two-component magnetic shields on the thermal ampacity of underground power cables. Progress In Electromagnetics Research. 135:601-625. https://doi.org/10.2528/PIER12112303 ; S ; 601 ; 625 ; 135

A calorimetric measuring system for measuring the ratio between AC and DC resistance, RAC/RDC, of high voltage power cable conductors has been designed and constructed. An uncertainty analysis predicts that the ratio RAC/RDC at 90°C of a 2500 mm2 cable of low loss design can be measured with an uncertainty of 1,0%. But the uncertainty of an actual measurement was larger due to unresolved sources of uncertainty. ; The work reported here has received support from the EMPIR programme co-financed by the Participating States and from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

"Cable and satellite television have grown rapidly throughout the developing world. The availability of cable and satellite television exposes viewers to new information about the outside world, which may affect individual attitudes and behaviors. This paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural India. Using a three-year individual-level panel dataset, we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in women's status. We find significant increases in reported autonomy, decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference. We also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility (primarily via increased birth spacing). The effects are large, equivalent in some cases to about five years of education in the cross section, and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas. We argue that the results are not driven by pre-existing differential trends. These results have important policy implications, as India and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

This paper addresses how the United States and its allies can more strategically compete with Chinese and Russian threats to subsea cables and reduce the vulnerability of cable systems.