An architect argues to stay the wrecking ball and reuse older buildings, a historian recalls Martin Luther King Jr.’s timeless economic message, a master storyteller brings a new set of tales, an engineer conjures a children’s book with a robot’s-eye view of the deep ocean …

But hark! — yet more. Personal essays on nature spanning a biologist’s career, a best-selling author’s take on America’s unprecedented president, and a thoughtful book about books themselves, their past and their unwritten future. Plus jazz and classical recordings from faculty in the 91̽��School of Music.

As the year comes to a close and festivities abound, some 91̽�� faculty creations can make great gifts for the thinking Dawg on your giving list. Here’s a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by 91̽��talents in the last year or so.

Michael Honey, “To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.”

Fifty years have passed since King’s 1968 assassination. In a new book, Honey, a 91̽��Tacoma historian, notes that economic justice and labor rights were always part of King’s progressive message. “He said in Memphis, ‘It’s a crime in a rich nation for people to receive starvation wages,’” Honey says. “That remains a basic issue right now across the country, where it seems like the economy is doing really well but there are millions of people in poverty.” Published by .

Dana Manalang, “.”

After years working on a cabled observatory that monitors the Pacific Northwest seafloor and water above, Manalang, an engineer with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, decided to share the wonder of the deep sea with younger audiences. The result is this new children’s book published by Virginia-based , which combines images of the deep ocean captured during 91̽��School of Oceanography research cruises with rhyming couplets and a cartoon robot illustrated by 91̽��designer .

Charles Johnson, “.”

A prolific author and 91̽��professor emeritus of English, Johnson spins a dozen yarns in this new story collection, from realism to light science fiction and beyond, laced gently with humor and philosophy. Calling him a “modern master,” Kirkus Reviews said his stories “can be as morally instructive as fables, as fancifully ingenious as Twilight Zone scripts, and as elegantly inscrutable as Zen riddles.” Asked how he knows when a story is done, Johnson said: “When I can’t add another line (or word) to it without disturbing the delicate balance of music and meaning, sound and sense that comes from relentless revisions.” Published by

Kathryn Rogers Merlino, “Building Reuse: Sustainability, Preservation, and the Value of Design”

Tearing down buildings and discarding the energy and materials embodied in them is contrary to the values of sustainability, writes Merlino, an associate professor of architecture in the 91̽��College of Built Environments. We avidly recycle and compost, but have no cultural ethic about reusing our largest manufactured goods — our buildings. “We quickly demolish buildings in the name of new, ‘green’ structures, rather than looking for the possibilities of how we can work with what exists,” Merlino says. To me there is an inherent conflict in there, and I think we can do better.” Published by .

David Shields, “No One Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention.”

In his latest release, Shields, a 91̽��professor of English and New York Times best-selling author, deconstructs the mind of the current president of the United States. The book, is “at once a psychological investigation of Trump, a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power,” publisher’s notes say, “and above all a dagger into the rhetoric of American political discourse — a dissection of the politesse that gave rise to and sustains Trump.” He calls it “a manual for beating bullies.” Published by .

Kenneth Pyle: “”

After the United States ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it then conducted “the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history,” writes Pyle, a 91̽��professor emeritus of international studies. Only now, amid geopolitical changes of the 21st century, is Japan pulling free from American dominance and constraints placed on it after the war. The book, distilling a lifetime of research, examines how Japan, with its conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order and tracks the now-changing relationship between the two nations. Published by .

Amaranth Borsuk, “ ”

Borsuk, a 91̽��Bothell assistant professor as well as a poet and book artist, explores the book, its past and possible futures in this compact volume. “Rather than bemoaning the death of books or creating a dichotomy between print and digital media,” she writes, “this guide points to continuities, positioning the book as a changing technology and highlighting the way artists in the 20th and 21st centuries have pushed us to rethink and redefine the term.” Published by

Jim Kenagy, “”

Kenagy, a professor emeritus of biology, presents a collection of 13 nature essays set in time across his life, from freshman field trips through his  dissertation and career at a major university. “These stories are not the scientific reports of a research professor, nor are they an attempt at popular science,” state publisher’s notes. “These are personal essays that spring forth from observation and discovery of what nature has to show anyone who is willing to pay attention.” Published by .

Pimone Triplett, “”

In her new book of poems, Triplett, a 91̽��associate professor of English and creative writing, says she explores “the thinning lines between responsibility and complicity, the tangled ‘supply chain’ that unnervingly connects the domestic to the political, personal memory to social practice, and our age-old familial discords to our new place in the anthropocentric world. Published by .

Multiple authors, “”

This reference book was first published in 1973 and became an instant classic for its innovative style and comprehensive illustrations. Now, botanists at the 91̽��Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture have created this updated second edition, which includes the reclassification or renaming of about 40 percent of the taxa covered by the first edition. Published by .

And to accompany your reading, here are some recent recordings from faculty in the 91̽��School of Music:

Cuong Vu 4-Tet, “”

The latest CD by Vu, trumpeter and 91̽��Jazz Studies professor and chair — created with his “4-tet” — is landing on critics’ best-of lists for 2018. Guitarist Bill Frisell, drummer Ted Poor, bassist Luke Bergman and Vu all contribute new music on this follow-up to the group’s 2017 album. A London Jazz News critic called the results “uniformly excellent.” Released by RareNoise Records.

Craig Sheppard, “” and “”

Sheppard, 91̽��professor of music, released two CDs this year, documenting live performances at Meany Hall. For one, he presents the revised score of Bach’s master work, left incomplete upon the composer’s death. The other is a deluxe collection of Brahms’s four sets of lyrical piano miniatures,
Opus 116 through 119. Released by Romeo Records.

Michael Partington, “”

An artist in residence at the 91̽��School of Music, Partington returns to the 19^th century repertoire that formed the basis of his early musical development in this collection, performed on a mid-1800s French Romantic guitar. Released by Rosewood Guitar.

The result is “,” published this month by Virginia-based Mascot Books.

The book combines images of the deep ocean captured during 91̽��School of Oceanography research cruises with rhyming couplets and a cartoon robot illustrated by a 91̽��graphic designer.

“I started formulating the idea when my children were in preschool, and I shared pictures and videos from 91̽��oceanographic expeditions with their class,” said author , an engineer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “I wanted to develop content appropriate for younger children, with an emphasis not only on the amazing science of the oceans, but also the innovative robots that we use for ocean research and exploration.”

Most of the photos were taken off the coast of Oregon and Washington by the book’s main character, ROPOS: a deep-sea robot that braves near-freezing temperatures and crushing pressures to attach instruments beneath as much as 2 miles of water. The Canadian robot, whose full name is the Remotely Operated Platform for Ocean Sciences, captured the images while installing and maintaining the , a high-tech marine observatory led by 91̽��professors John Delaney and Deborah Kelley.

The text’s rhyming couplets blend descriptions of the robot’s travels and what it encounters with scientific facts about the deep ocean. For example:

Now here is a fact that not all may know:
Deep under the water there are volcanoes.
That’s why we’re here — to discover the fate
Of a volcano that sits between tectonic plates.

That page, of course, features a depiction of , the observatory’s centerpiece.

Manalang’s day job includes helping researchers worldwide prepare instruments that will connect to the ocean observatory. She said she saw an opportunity to inspire very young audiences with the reality of modern oceanographic research.

“While the ocean is easily the most life-sustaining resource on our planet, there’s so much we don’t know about it,” Manalang said. “By making ocean exploration more accessible, I hope it can also help build diversity in the next generation of ocean scientists and engineers.”

The book’s illustrations and graphic design were done by , creative director at the UW-based Center for Environmental Visualization. The center provides much of the graphic design for the cabled observatory, and the book is dedicated to a former member of the team.

The book is a product of , a project that Manalang, a mother of two, founded to share “the thrill of robotic exploration through storytelling and engaging content.” She has also posted free that accompany the book’s content, and she will be visiting local schools to talk about working as an engineer.

Manalang and Hadaway will be at a kickoff event 6 p.m. Oct. 25 at the University Book Store.

Watch Manalang speak about her project at a recent Ignite Seattle event:

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For more information, contact dana@robotsdiscover.com.

91̽�� oceanographers are working with a local company to develop a simple new technique that could track seafloor movement in earthquake-prone coastal areas. Researchers began testing the approach this summer in central California, and they plan to present initial results in December at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in New Orleans.

Their approach uses existing water-pressure sensors to cheaply measure gradual swelling of the seafloor over months to years. If successful, the innovative hack could provide new insight into motion along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and similar faults off Mexico, Chile and Japan. The data could provide clues about what types of earthquakes and tsunamis each fault can generate, where and how often.

The concept began with a workshop in 2012 that brought together , the founder of Bellevue-based Paroscientific, Inc., with 91̽��geoscientists. Paros’ company manufactures sensors used to measure pressure at the bottom of the ocean with high precision, which are used by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for its tsunami sensors.

But an engineering quirk prevents the sensors from measuring the gradual ground motions that build up pressure along earthquake faults. The instruments can measure seafloor pressure, or the weight of water above the sensor, to an extremely precise fraction of a millimeter. But the readings lose accuracy over time, and the error is proportional to the quantity measured. On the ocean floor, where pressures are tens to hundreds of times that on the surface, the readings can change by 10 centimeters (3 inches) per year. In between major earthquakes, this is much more than the seafloor might shift up or down due to tectonic forces.

“If you want to measure how the seafloor is moving, you don’t want your reading to change by a larger value than the thing that you’re measuring,” said , an engineer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory who is working on the project.

Paros proposed an idea that would instead calibrate the pressure sensor against the air pressure inside the metal case that houses the instrument, which is roughly one atmosphere. This would allow existing pressure sensors to autonomously track small bulges and slumps on the seafloor.

Last year engineers at the 91̽��Applied Physics Laboratory modified an existing Paros pressure sensor. The sensitive quartz crystal that measures the seafloor pressure can now be connected to measure pressure inside its titanium instrument case, with a known pressure and another barometer to check the value. The prototype instrument was attached in mid-June to the , a cabled seafloor observatory that lets researchers communicate directly with the instrument.

“That chunk of seafloor actually does not move much. We’re looking for a null result,” Manalang said. “If successful, the next step would be to deploy similar instruments in some more geologically active areas.”

Those areas include the Cascadia Subduction Zone, the fault that could unleash the at any time on the Pacific Northwest. Geologists studying the small rise and fall of this section of seafloor, around 1 centimeter per year, have instead been forced to develop complicated workarounds.

“We are trying to find a pattern of which areas are going up and which areas are going down, and how quickly, which can potentially tell us where the subduction zone fault is locked,” said , a 91̽��oceanography professor who holds the Paros endowed chair. “But we can’t yet do that with a conventional pressure sensor.”

Wilcock and seismologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been monitoring seafloor movement off central Oregon, where the Cascadia Fault displays behavior that suggests it may gradually slip, releasing strain along that section of the fault. Once a year, the partners go to sea with a research ship, deep-sea robot and specialized equipment to calibrate six seafloor pressure sensors. By monitoring exactly how the seafloor has moved in this way from one summer to the next, they can compare sections of the fault and learn which zones are fully locked, building up potentially dangerous energy, and which aren’t.

“The approach we are using appears to work, but it’s expensive, and you can’t do it very often,” Wilcock said.

If Paros’ modified sensors can do the job, future work might place a network of them along Cascadia or other subduction zones, in which a seafloor plate plunges beneath a continental plate. Measuring motion along different parts of these faults might answer longstanding questions about how and where a fault ruptures.

From her Seattle office, Manalang now communicates with the prototype sensor in Monterey and flips the crystal about once each weekday to recalibrate it against the instrument housing pressure. She will flip it less often as the test continues, while remotely monitoring the change in pressure readings.

“We’re still close to the starting line on this one, and have some initial, really promising results,” Manalang said. Observations so far show that the shift in measurements is predictable, and similar at both ends of the instrument’s range. “We’re at the very beginning of what we hope is a fairly long-term test,” she said.

If the method proves reliable, future pressure sensors could be programmed to pivot periodically on their own and gather observations over months or years. Precise long-term measurements of water pressure could not only help seismologists, but also researchers who study how sea level changes over decades.

“If you can make very accurate observations, and routinely, it would interest both the people studying what’s happening beneath and what’s happening above,” Wilcock said. “These data would open up a whole bunch of new studies.”

The research is funded by Jerry Paros and the 91̽��.

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For more information, contact Wilcock at 206-543-6043 or wilcock@uw.edu and Manalang at 206-685-9910 or manalang@uw.edu.