Check out the license plates of your fellow motorists the next time you are out for a drive, and you may notice more dealer tags than usual.

When it comes to financial planning, Cesar Lopez knows his stuff. He can write up an annuity, help with investment and tax strategies and give advice on insurance needs. Just don’t ask him to fix his own computer.

It’s a case of David versus Goliath. A tiny, privately held Rocklin company is taking on multimillion-dollar competitors with a lightning-fast technology that’s more sophisticated than the competition’s.

Bill Mueller, 47, is CEO and managing partner at Valley Vision. One of four partners in the regional Next Economy initiative, Valley Vision serves as the project manager of the Capital Region’s latest economic development effort.

Rollie Swingle didn’t have treatment options for his stage IV prostate cancer.

Tom Kandris makes boxes. And his company, PackageOne Inc., better known as American River Packaging, can also fill them.

The black widows caged in professor Craig Vierra’s laboratory evoke the macabre. But here, in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stockton’s University of the Pacific, these crawlers are the story’s heroines.

As Sacramento attempts to forge a regional economic development strategy, manufacturing is being touted as a potential breadwinner, but rebuilding the industry piecemeal could take time.

In response to global warming, foreign oil reliance and overstressing the nation’s current energy system, policy makers and citizens are backing efforts to produce more safe, clean, renewable energy. But with numerous limitations, implementing green energy has been difficult.

It didn’t take German immigrant Martin Hermann long to see California as the land of sunshine. And within that bounteous golden glow, he imagined opportunity.