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While term life insurance has historically been sold to income-earning men to secure the financial futures of their families, in India there is a growing number of life insurance products targeting women, particularly unwaged housewives. In marketing these financial products to Indian women, I show how life insurance companies incorporate the feminist critique of devalued domestic labor. Drawing on analysis of insurance policies, marketing and promotional materials, as well as personal advice articles, it goes on to show how there is, something uncanny or unsettling about the way life insurance not only commodifies and financializes domestic labor, but also focuses on the reproductive bodies of women through health riders. The article situates contemporary discourses of life insurance for women within a longer history of women's property and of mobilizing capital through rather than for women in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the decade since the 2008 global financial crisis, much of the debate has been over whom to blame: reckless speculative finance or irresponsible (often low-income) borrowers. This essay takes up this set of moral arguments about what the poor can and should be able to afford by examining subprime logics at a global scale: subprime empire. Predatory lending in heartland America and development-oriented microcredit in places such as India and Paraguay appear not just to be geographically disparate but also to have different moral valences. After closer inspection, however, we argue that subprime lending and microfinance are two sides of the same coin. Our analysis of microfinance allows us to understand what is happening in the "in-between" as capital flows between financial investors and poor borrowers. By comparing financialization in India and Paraguay, we document and theorize the making of subprime empires that rely on actors within marginal financial sites to stabilize the evaluative frameworks and social interdependencies that make profits flow. We argue that the forms of financial capture and conversion in the "financial in-between" reproduce imperial dynamics by naturalizing the limited expectations of economic subjects of the global south and erasing the violence inherent in these forms of economic redistribution that maintain those expectations as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report electronic transport in nanostructured films of the rare-earth manganite La0.67Sr0.33MnO3. The films were grown by chemical solution deposition. The films show a resistivity peak in the temperature range of 250–265 K and have average grain size (∼50–60 nm). The grain size can be controlled by postdeposition annealing. The films also show a rise in resistivity at low temperature (T<40 K), reasonable low-field magnetoresistance up to 200 K, and nonlinear conductivity that shows up below 30 K. We ascribe these behaviors to the large number of natural grain boundaries that are present in these nanostructured films. We were also able to map the inhomogeneous local electronic properties arising from these grain boundaries using a variable-temperature scanning-tunneling microscope. We found that as the temperature is lowered, due to differences between the electronic properties of the grains and grain boundaries, the transport becomes more inhomogeneous. The nonlinear conduction as well as the low-field magnetoresistance in these nanostructured films closely resemble those in films with artificial grain boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we report electronic transport in nanostructured films of the rare-earth manganite La0.67Sr0.33MnO3. The films were grown by chemical solution deposition. The films show a resistivity peak in the temperature range of 250–265 K and have average grain size (∼50–60 nm). The grain size can be controlled by postdeposition annealing. The films also show a rise in resistivity at low temperature (T<40 K), reasonable low-field magnetoresistance up to 200 K, and nonlinear conductivity that shows up below 30 K. We ascribe these behaviors to the large number of natural grain boundaries that are present in these nanostructured films. We were also able to map the inhomogeneous local electronic properties arising from these grain boundaries using a variable-temperature scanning-tunneling microscope. We found that as the temperature is lowered, due to differences between the electronic properties of the grains and grain boundaries, the transport becomes more inhomogeneous. The nonlinear conduction as well as the low-field magnetoresistance in these nanostructured films closely resemble those in films with artificial grain boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electronic transport in nanostructured films of the rare-earth manganite La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 is reported. Results reveal that as the temperature is lowered, due to differences between the electronic properties of the grains and grain boundaries, the transport becomes more inhomogeneous.

Financial inclusion has been touted as a developmental good, drawing the poor - that is, the financially excluded - into the ambit of formal banking services. Chapter 6 looks at how microfinance actors located in the Global North interact with and understand their role in relation to poor borrowers in the Global South. Despite the push from MFIs, Radhakrishnan finds that women often refuse this ethos - they are willing to be borrowers but will not accept the symbolic extraction it entails in terms of working motherhood. [Extracted from the article]

Microfirance loan officers play a critical, if underexamined, role in incorporating the poor into financial networks at the global peripheries. As "proxy-creditors," loan officers in Kolkata, India, must produce and alienate debt relationships to create loan products. I argue that the process of financialization is articulated through local idioms of moneylending, care, and respect. Moreover, at the heart of this labor is the unresolved tension between capitalist expansion and ethical concerns for the everyday relationships that are used to extend credit to the Fnancially excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report a novel, low temperature (450–600 °C) route for the synthesis of highly crystalline and homogeneous nanoparticles of lanthanum calcium manganese oxide La0.67Ca0.33MnO3 (LCMO). The nanocrystallites, with average particle size of 30 nm, possess a ferromagnetic–paramagnetic transition temperature (Tc) of 300 K, which is about 50 K higher than that of a bulk single crystal. The transition temperature was found to be inversely proportional to the particle size. The Rietveld analysis of the powder X-ray diffraction data of the phase-pure nanopowders reveals that the particle size reduction leads to a significant contraction of the unit cell volume and a reduction of the unit cell anisotropy. We propose that these two lattice effects are responsible for the observed enhancement in Tc. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We report the destabilization of the charge ordered insulating (COI) state in a localized region of Pr0.63Ca0.37MnO3 single crystal by current injection using a scanning tunneling microscope tip. This leads to controlled phase separation and formation of localized metallic nanoislands in the COI matrix which have been detected by local tunneling conductance mapping. The metallic regions thus created persist even after reducing the injected current to lower values. The original conductance state can be restored by injecting a current of similar magnitude but of opposite polarity. We thus achieve reversible nanoscale phase separation that gives rise to the possibility to “write, read, and erase” nanosized conducting regions in an insulating matrix with high spatial resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report fabrication of array of crystalline nanowires (average diameter of 65 nm) of colossal magnetoresistive oxide La[sub 0.67]Ca[sub 0.33]MnO[sub 3] (LCMO, x=0.33) within anodized alumina templates by filling the pores with a sol that allows formation of LCMO phase at the relatively low temperature of 600 °C. The crystalline nanowires with correct stoichiometry stabilize in the orthorhombic phase at room temperature. The nanowires are ferromagnetic at room temperature and exhibit enhanced ferromagnetic transition temperature well in excess of 300 K, which is substantially higher than that of single crystalline LCMO. This enhancement we attribute to the size induced lattice contraction in the nanowires. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]