"My dog Sam has a superpower. He doesn't wear a costume. He can't fly. And he definitely can't make himself invisible. Sam's superpower is happiness." Sam can find happiness in the most unexpected places: a smelly old boot, a deflated ball, even in a muddy puddle! When Dad leaves for work, Sam's young owner needs a little help to be happy again. Can Sam show his best friend how to be a bit less sad and a bit more dog? This is a funny and heart-warming picture book about finding joy in the simplest things. With uplifting text from Caroline Crowe and engaging, lively illustrations from Carlos Velez, this feel-good story celebrates the connection between children and pets and encourages us all to be more dog!

From the moment six-year-old Eva wakes up, her day is full of questions. Her Peruvian Papa says she has billions of questions, but really Eva has balloons full of questions that she carries around until she can find the answers. She has big questions like "What can I do about all the plastic in the ocean?" and small questions like "Donde esta Peru?" She has bright questions: "?Los unicornios existen?" and warm questions: "Could I invent a hug that would last all day long?" She has funny questions like "Do bats get dizzy hanging upside down?" and confusing questions: "Why are oranges orange?!" Sometimes Eva's bunch of balloons grows so big that it feels overwhelming, but she's learning that it can take time to find out all the answers, and that's OK. This funny and heart-warming story by Scottish author Amy Moreno inventively captures the joy and busyness of young children's minds and encourages families to ask questions -- even when they don't have the answers. Coming from a bilingual family, Amy gives authentic insight into how Eva communicates, with a lively story in English and Spanish. Mexican illustrator Carlos Velez's wonderfully vivid artwork is full of warmth and humour.

Five-year-old Viva learns there is a need for girls with powerful voices everywhere when she helps Papi raise his voice on the picket line. Viva's Papi is a bus driver and Viva loves going to work with him. The sounds of the traffic and the voices of the passengers are music to Viva's ears. When she finds out that Papi's union is going on strike, she convinces Papi to take her along to the picket line. When quiet Papi is too nervous to give his speech, Viva uses her powerful voice to give him the confidence to find his own. A first introduction to labor unions, strikes, picket lines, and workers' rights, this powerful picture book is both educational and endearing. Debut author Raquel Donoso has crafted a beautiful story about courage, family, and using your voice to help others. Viva's story is based on Donoso's own childhood experience, in which her father's union went on strike.

Inequality and Economic Development in Brazil is part of the World Bank Country Study series. These reports are published with the approval of the subject government to communicate the results of the Bank's work on the economic and related conditions of member countries to governments and to the development community. Excessive income inequality is unfair and undesirable on ethical grounds and can bring adverse effects on economic growth, health outcomes, social cohesion, and crime. Excessively unequal initial conditions are likely to lead to a perverse cycle of weak social mobility. Such is the case in countries like Brazil, where fertility differentials between educated and uneducated mothers are much greater. Brazil's income inequality has been very high and persistent over time, and has deep historic roots. Nonetheless, there have been important income improvements for the poorest, especially since stabilization in 1993. Brazil also has achieved major improvements in social indicators in the last few decades. This study addresses three questions: - Why do inequalities matter for Brazil's development? - Why does Brazil occupy a position of very high inequality in the international community? - What should public policy do about it?

The pollution of water bodies with nutrients create a rich environment that encourages the growth of algae and invasive water plants such as the Water Hyacinth. The Water Hyacinth in its natural habitat does not represent a major problem, but out of its natural habitat, the water plant double its biomass in less than two weeks. The plants mesh form thick floating mats that rapidly cover the surface of the infested water body. This book presents the development of a Water Hyacinth Model. The model is based in a Demographic growth function and considers growth-limiting factors like nutrients, temperature, solar radiation, pH and biomass density. Three control strategies can be assessed: harvesting the plant, use bio control agents and chemical abatements. The model was developed in the Open Process Library of DELWAQ which facilitates the coupling online with the water quality and hydrodynamic model of Sobek. The book demonstrates the high potential of integration of water quality and ecosystem models in helping to understand the complex relationships between management actions and ecosystems responds.

The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region presents advanced anthropological theorizing of culture in an important regional setting. Not a static entity, the transborder region is peopled by ever-changing groups who face the challenges of social inequality: political enforcement of privilege, economic subordination of indigenous communities, and organized resistance to domination.The book, influenced by the work of Eric Wolf and senior editor Carlos Velez-Ibanez, centers on the greater Mexican North/U.S. Southwest, although the geographic range extends farther. This tradition, like other transborder approaches, attends to complex and fluid cultural and linguistic processes, going beyond the classical modern anthropological vision of one people, one culture, one language. With respect to recent approaches, however, it is more deeply social, focusing on vertical relations of power and horizontal bonds of mutuality. Velez-Ibanez and Heyman envision this region as involving diverse and unequal social groups in dynamic motion over thousands of years. Thus the historical interaction of the U.S.-Mexico border, however massively unequal and powerful, is only the most recent manifestation of this longer history and common ecology. Contributors emphasize the dynamic "transborder" quality-conflicts, resistance, slanting, displacements, and persistence-in order to combine a critical perspective on unequal power relations with a questioning perspective on claims to bounded simplicity and perfection. The book is notable for its high degree of connection across the various chapters, strengthened by internal syntheses from notable border scholars, including Alejandro Lugo and Roberto Alvarez. In the final section, Judith Freidenberg draws general lessons from particular case studies, summarizing that "access to valued scarce resources prompts the erection of human differences that get solidified into borders," dividing and limiting, engendering vulnerabilities and marginalizing some people. At a time when understanding the U.S.-Mexico border is more important than ever, this volume offers a critical anthropological and historical approach to working in transborder regions. Contributors: Amado Alarcon, Robert R. Alvarez, Jr., Miguel Diaz-Barriga, Margaret Dorsey, Judith Noemi Freidenberg, Ruth Gomberg-Munoz, James B. Greenberg, Josiah Heyman, Jane H. Hill, Sarah Horton, Alejandro Lugo, Luminita-Anda Mandache, Corina Marrufo, Guillermina Gina Nunez-Mchiri, Anna Ochoa O'Leary, Luis F. B. Plascencia, Lucero Radonic, Diana Riviera, Thomas E. Sheridan, Kathleen Staudt, Carlos G. Velez-Ibanez.