Ms. Fiakas is a seasoned, credentialed investment professional with a diversified and successful track record as a research analyst and as an investment banker. She is a member the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR) and the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA). Ms. Fiakas is also Managing Member of Crystal Equity Research, LLC.

The New Jersey Commission of Health Science Education and Training recently proposed to merge state's three public research universities. Soaring federal and state budget deficits are likely to exert added pressure on already strained relationship between academe and state - especially with regards to research priorities and allocation of ever-scarcer resources.

This friction is inevitable because interaction between technology and science is complex and ill-understood. Some technological advances spawn new scientific fields - steel industry gave birth to metallurgy, computers to computer science and transistor to solid state physics. The discoveries of science also lead, though usually circuitously, to technological breakthroughs - consider examples of semiconductors and biotechnology.

Thus, it is safe to generalize and say that technology sector is only more visible and alluring tip of drabber iceberg of research and development. The military, universities, institutes and industry all over world plough hundreds of billions annually into both basic and applied studies. But governments are most important sponsors of pure scientific pursuits by a long shot.

Science is widely perceived as a public good - its benefits are shared. Rational individuals would do well to sit back and copy outcomes of research - rather than produce widely replicated discoveries themselves. The government has to step in to provide them with incentives to innovate.

Thus, in minds of most laymen and many economists, science is associated exclusively with publicly-funded universities and defense establishment. Inventions such as jet aircraft and Internet are often touted as examples of civilian benefits of publicly funded military research. The pharmaceutical, biomedical, information technology and space industries, for instance - though largely private - rely heavily on fruits of nonrivalrous (i.e. public domain) science sponsored by state.

The majority of 501 corporations surveyed by Department of Finance and Revenue Canada in 1995-6 reported that government funding improved their internal cash flow - an important consideration in decision to undertake research and development. Most beneficiaries claimed tax incentives for seven years and recorded employment growth.

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, and eBookWeb , a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory Bellaonline, and Suite101 .

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com