Abstract
This paper discusses interstellar gas and dust, listing the reasons why it is interesting. According to the paper, these reasons are simply that interstellar clouds can simply be enormous and appear at least as mystical and beautiful as the stars themselves., and more practically, the interstellar medium is capable of telling us very significant things about the nature of our universe, how it was formed, and what properties dominate it. Like most branches of astronomy, perhaps the most exciting application of studies conducted upon cosmic dust is to cosmology.

Tags:cosmic, dust, astronomy

Abstract
An overview of the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.

Tags:the, dust, bowl

Abstract
In this article, the writer looks at two books that present both similar and differing views of the Dust Bowl, 'The Dust Bowl Diary' by Ann Marie Low and Donald Worster's 'Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s'. The writer maintains that despite the similarity within their topics both authors explore the topic through vastly different lenses. The writer points out that for Ann Marie Low, the Dust Bowl was her childhood and the vivid imagery and feelings that she expresses in her book colors the human nature of the Dust Bowl and the stories and feelings of those individuals who survived through this time. The writer then notes that Donald Worster approaches the topic of the Dust Bowl through the lenses of a scientist and sociologist and he approaches the problems associated with the Dust Bowl through a much more detailed and detached manner than Low. The writer concludes that while Low and Worster's accounts of the Dust Bowl are from differing perspectives, they share similarities in content and narrative description.

From the Paper
"Mary Ann Low's "Bust Bowl Diary" was an important literary piece because it accurate encapsulates the conditions of the people living within the Dust Bowl period. Her narrative is colored by personal observation rather that research and thus her narrative appears much more in depth and three dimensional than Worster's account. Low uses first person narrative through this book and this is extremely important to her story. This is because she writes from the perspective of her actual age during the Dust Bowl era, 12 years old. She explains that the dust bowl permeated every area of life and as a result implicitly changed the way that individuals during that era lived and worked."

Tags:storm, farming, poverty, ecology

Abstract
Traditional explanations of the Dust Bowl emphasize the lack of rain as the fundamental cause of the severe dust storms that struck the southern plains. This paper discusses additional reasons for the Dust Bowl such as poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought. The paper describes the effect the Dust Bowl had on the inhabitants.

From the Paper
"Americans tend to confuse the "Dust Bowl," a region plagued by dust storms in the 1930s, with the mass migration of "Okies and Arkies" to California that occurred in the same decades. Many people were forced to leave the Dust Bowl for California. But the majority of 1930s migrants, even migrants from Oklahoma, came from regions of the country largely unaffected by the dust storms.

The whole concept of a Dust Bowl migration is a wonderful misnomer. Most of the people had nothing to do with the Dust Bowl region. Most really weren't victims of the drought either. A lot of them weren't even farmers."

Tags:John, Steinbeck, Grapes, of, Wrath, Great, Plains, Oklahoma, drought, Route, 66, Okies

Abstract
This paper provides a discussion of Sophocles' "Antigone" with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "Heat and Dust". The analysis argues that while Antigone is both a tragic hero and a modern hero, Olivia and the female narrator in "Heat and Dust" can only be considered modern heroes.

From the Paper
"To determine whether Antigone in Sophocles' tragedy "Antigone" and whether Olivia and a modern descendent of her family in Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novel "Heat and Dust" are heroic, one must define a working definition of heroic. In Aristotle's "Poetics", the philosopher maintains that the tragic hero is one whose action consists of a chain of events set in motion by the hero through his error of frailty, hamartia, resulting in a reversal peripeteia of his fortunes, a change by which the action veers..."

Tags:sacrifice, culture, values, norms, isolation, ostracism, taboo, infidelity, adultery, India, English, letters, gods, Creon, Ismene, burial, higher power, morality, pride, pity, fear

Abstract
This paper analyzes the two short stories by Anita Desai, "Winterscape" and "Diamond Dust". The paper examines how in "Winterscape", the oriental culture starts to create a space in an occidental society. It also looks at how in "Diamond Dust" even inside a non-dominant culture, there are ideologies that are also claiming a space of containment. The paper discusses how in both short stories, characters and situations acquire a symbolic meaning and thus they are capable of being associated to phenomena specific of different cultures or of major spheres, such as the Eastern/Western opposition.

From the Paper
"In the process of creation of a certain cultural identity, heterogeneity tends to be replaced by homogeneity. In this way, the image that such identity projects in other cultures is an homogenous and identifiable whole. Western culture has built an stereotyped image of India. We can find an instance of this in Beth and her prejudice against the Hindu sisters in Winterscape. Anita Desai seeks to deconstruct the Hindu cultural identity stereotype that has been built by Western societies. From the localized way of thinking of post modernity, she presents the spatial configuration of India as a conflict between opposing forces. In Diamond Dust, she wants to show that in India the past and the present, the wild and the civilized world are living together."

Tags:post, colonial, post, modernity, hybridism, culture, east, negotiation

Abstract
The paper shows how the era of the Dust Bowl was an era of mass migration as thousands moved from the region where drought and other factors had ruined the farmland to California, believed to be the land of milk and honey and opportunity. The paper explores how the Dust Bowl and the mass migration it fostered are well illustrated in the novel "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, and both the novel and the era it depicts are further illuminated by the article "Steinbeck, Guthrie and Popular Culture" by Elaine S. Apthorp. The paper further shows how the novel and the article complement one another and contribute to our understanding of the era and of the way Steinbeck shaped that era into an artistic statement in his novel.

From the Paper
"The didactic chapters referred to by Apthorp are the interchapters where Steinbeck performs the analytical task of reporting on the state of America during the Depression, the plight of the people, and other information included with a journalistic eye for what is most telling. In these interchapters, Steinbeck seems to step back from the story to examine the larger picture, but in truth, the author never forgets the reality faced by his characters. For instance, the different members of the family have characteristics which add to their problems and which also reflect larger forces at the same time. Grandpa Joad, for instance, is senile, and this symbolizes the vulnerability of the entire family."

Tags:migrant, workers, Great, Depression, Joad, family

Abstract
This paper examines the causes of the original Dust Bowl, tackling issues such as soil composition, climatological factors, and farmer negligence. It also addresses the continuing threat of another Dust Bowl-like crisis and what needs to be done to ensure that it does not happen

From the Paper
"The assertion that even without human-induced blunders there would have been at least somewhat of a crisis in the 30's seems like a distinct possibility. There was a definite shift in climate, consisting of severe blizzards, prolonged severe drought, and even a flood to start it all off. Temperature swings between summer and winter were even more severe than usual and dry spells and occasional downpours seemed to strike at the most inopportune moments time and time again (Bonnifield, 1979). Taking these things into account, it seems that even without over-planting, lack of erosion-control and other human mistakes, some sort of agricultural downturn would have taken place."

Tags:agriculture, america, erosion, farming, plains, soil, wind

Abstract
This paper analyzes the poem "Dust of Snow" by Robert Frost. It uses it as an example of how Frost's poems in general capture a fleeting picture of a natural event and how these events are described in very simple words, without flowery or elaborate language, using plain verse structures. It analyzes the style of the poem stanza by stanza and then compares it to it's parody, Bob McKenty's "Snow on Frost" which makes fun of Frost's earthiness, realism and ironic humor by echoing both Frost's words and images and the structure of the poem itself.

From the Paper
"In the first stanza, Frost captures a moment that might have been observed while taking a walk in the country in winter. The description is so stripped of detail that it is up to us to visualize the black bird in the dark evergreen tree, dislodging a sprinkling of white snow when it alights or takes off from the branch, perhaps disturbed by the human's approach. But because the poet specifies that the bird is a crow and the tree is a hemlock, other layers of meaning can be inferred at a symbolic level. The crow is typically seen as a somewhat negative creature (unlike the robin, for example), perhaps even as a bad omen."

Tags:verse, stanza, nature, rhyme, folklore, parody, humor

Abstract
This paper addresses the possible causes of the Dust Bowl phenomenon and how and why it led to the mass exodus of people from the Great Plains to California.

From the Paper
"The Great Depression marked a time of economic disaster in the United States. Between 1930 and 1941, Great Plains farmers witnessed the worst drought in the country's history (Henretta 709). This and many other factors led to the period that has become known as the Dust Bowl. This period in time is called the Dust Bowl because "Dust seeped into houses and blackened the pillow around one's head, the dinner plates on the table, the bread dough on the back of the stove" (Henretta 709). The term Dust Bowl was created by an Associated Press staff writer, Robert Geiger, in response to the things he saw in Guymon, Oklahoma. Within months, it was the term used throughout the nation to describe the wind-blown land throughout Kansas, southeastern Colorado, the Oklahoma Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the Texas Panhandle, and northeastern New Mexico (Logsdon 3). The Dust Bowl affected the lives of everyone in the United States, not just those of farmers in the Great Plains area. Knowledge of the Dust Bowl is important because this disaster could be repeated due to both its natural, economic, and social causes. "

Tags:california, depression, great, migration, weather, migration, okies, Woody, Guthrie, Joad, Roosevelt, new, deal, grapes, wrath, rattletrap, Steinbeckplains, draught, california