ain't no tuition for having no ambitionand ain't no loans for sittin yo ass at home

For last few days we've been visited by Rolf Johansson from Lund, a very distinguished professor who is both a medical doctor, and a PhD in control theory. He's worked on everything, now he's working with people from Volvo on a new type of engine.

Aside for anyone interested:

The engine is called Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition, which has a cycle something like a hybrid between diesel and petrol engines. This has been tried before (as early as 1890s!), but it's fundamentally unstable. That's good news for control scientists!

At Lund they have working prototypes which combine the thermodynamic efficiency of diesel with the cleaner emmissions of petrol. Only stumbling block is it requires pressure sensors in every cylinder for feedback, which is currently very expensive and prone to breaking. But they have a new technique using a spark plug as a passive sensor (with just a 100 or so volts across it) to measure the amount of ions in the chamber, from which information about the combustion phase can be derived

He has a very good memory. I met him once before at a conference in Las Vegas, when I was a piddling little first year PhD student, but upon seeing me the other day he remembered me, including which uni and which department I was from, and what my research was about.

After the talk, the group a nice dinner at a local restaurant, thankfully paid for by the department since it worked out to be about 70 bucks a head. I had lobster soup, followed by Reindeer steak in a kind of hot raspberry sauce. Very Nice!

I said previously that the restaurant scene here sucks. Well, it does if the idea of spending more than 20 bucks on a meal sends you running, but if you've got limitless cash it's pretty damn good.

Our table was very cool, had a little fireplace in the middle.

Some pix:

Kalle, Rolf (our visitor) and Anton (my boss)

I peruse the menu, looking to milk the department for all I can

Pedro and Uwe deep in discussion. These two share an office at uni and also, as of this week, an apartment. Now, they're both cool guys, but that would drive me mad I think.