Most of us living in Florida take our comfort for granted. We can even control our own personal environment with the simple flick of a switch -- until we walk outside. But what if there were a way to create a personal air conditioner portable enough to take with you anywhere you went?

This may seem a bit decadent for everyday life, even in our summer heat, but what if your job required you to wear a heavy, barely-breathable suit for safety reasons under harsh environmental conditions? Imagine a solider working in a sealed biohazard suit in a HazMat situation in Iraq, or a firefighter attempting to control an intense chemical blaze.

In these cases a personal air conditioner could actually save lives. The concept of personal climate control, one that has interested the military for decades, caught the attention of Dr. Daniel P. Rini, founder of Oviedo-based Rini Technologies, Inc. (RTI). An expert in cooling technology, Rini's company recently produced the first viable prototype of an ultra-portable personal air-conditioner.

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Two Olympic gold medals (1996 and 2000) prove softball is very, very good to Dot Richardson. Singled out as a star with the first U.S. hit and the first softball homerun in Olympic history, she was an NBC commentator at the 2004 Olympics in Athens, delivering play-by-play as her former U.S. Women's Softball Team won its third consecutive gold medal.

However, as an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, Richardson has a more enduring and direct impact on the lives of other American and international athletes of all sports. That includes Central Florida residents who want to improve fitness and athletic prowess. As medical director of the National Training Center (NTC), part of a 300-acre sports, health and education campus in Clermont, Fla., west of Orlando, Richardson establishes the vision and goals for this nonprofit branch of South Lake Hospital. Her focus is on state-of-the-art facilities,
sports science, performance programs and research in adolescent obesity, activity levels and shoulder injuries.

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Dom Meffe is one of those instant-likeables. Maybe it's because he hails from the tight-knit, friendly hometown of Pittsburgh. Maybe it's because he's just a good guy...with a big heart for his family, his employees, his clients and his business. Maybe it's because he tells good stories and draws interesting comparisons to his life and work. Maybe it's because he's someone you can relate to...who admits failures, has had tragedies in his life, and has done good. Or maybe it's because he's a survivor.

Cancer has inflicted a number of people in his family, including himself and his wife, and took his sister's life. And this is what's driven him to do what he's doing now...own and acquire a growing number of nuclear pharmacies to better diagnose and treat chronic conditions such as cancer.

In fact, only one year after founding Orlando-based Triad Isotopes, Meffe, 43, who has been a central figure in the pharma business over the past decade, is heading up what is now the fourth largest radiopharmaceutical services company in the industry. Triad has grown from 24 to 291 people with $90 million in current revenue and projections to double that in two years. That growth has come from 13 strategic M&As throughout the southeast...with many more planned over the next few years. And, Triad is among numerous specialty pharmaceutical companies (CuraScript, Axium, ACS and ICore) that have made their headquarters home in the nation's newest emerging biotech hub of Orlando.

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