People are changing our lives

Solar glass

Bill Gross's ambition to transform solar energy into electricity is met with a major obstacle: The Earth does not stand still and spin continuously. Gross said: 'It is easier to use solar energy if the Earth stops spinning '.

Indeed, the fact that the Earth is always rotating is the reason why electricity generated from solar energy is not much, but quite expensive.

Finally, Gross's Energy Innovations Company, founded in 2000 in Pasadena (USA), seems to have found a solution. The Sunflower system is designed by a company that includes a generator that uses 25 glass panels that reflect sunlight to a small, 900 cm2 silicon receiver. A microchip in this device will continuously analyze the reflected light and move the glass plates into the position to absorb the most photons.

Gross's first customers, all with unused roof space, will test Sunflower systems in 2006.

Fortigate firewall

In the computer virus battle, Ken Xie, a 42-year-old Chinese-American engineer in San Jose, California, is always on the first line of defense. Shielding is Ken Xie's forte because before he came to America to settle in 1989, this 1.96-meter tall man was a former professional volleyball athlete in China.

From sports to the computer industry, Ken Xie continues to promote his forte. His security technology is a revolution in the network security industry.

In the process of working with firewall software - anti-spam protection classes and virus and hackers attacks - Xie found that these programs slowed down the network. He sought to invent a hardware device that could remotely monitor Internet content, without interfering with application software and still filtering 'junk' virus.

In 2000, Ken Xie founded Fortinet Inc. Company. and developing FortiGate - a device that acts as an antivirus firewall on the network. When a virus attacks a computer network, FortiGate checks and blocks harmful programs before they can enter the computer.

Regenerating plastics from industrial waste

Mike Biddle always hated waste. When he was young, he always turned off the lights at home to save electricity. 11 years ago, when he founded a company to regenerate plastics from industrial waste such as electronics and cars, many people considered his decision to be quite insane. But Mike believes the world will save a lot of energy by recycling plastics from industrial waste.

Today, Biddle's dream is slowly shaping when Polymers Inc. MBA Company. In Richmond (USA) he became one of the leading companies in the field of plastic recycling. In the US, about 50 million tons of plastics are being used every year, but only 2% to 4% of these are recycled, compared with 95% in iron and aluminum. Polymers Inc. MBA recently inaugurated the world's largest plastic recycling plant in Guangzhou, China. In 2006, Mike Biddle planned to open a similar factory in Austria.

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