Near the end of a five-day tour of highly automated, high-tech Japanese factories, the American visitor was overwhelmed and feeling a little inferior. Watching a string of gleaming stereo sets move down an assembly line, he turned to the plant manager and said, 'Gosh, even your industrial design is better than ours.' 'Ah, yes,' replied the manager, 'but America has treasures that Japan can never hope to possess.' 'You mean our mineral wealth and bountiful farms?' 'All, no. I was referring to Caltech and MIT.' America's scientific institutions-its technological universities and government laboratories-are the envy of the world, producing ideas, devices and medicines that have made the U.S. prosperous, improved the lives of people around the globe and profoundly affected their perception of the world and the universe. This tremendous creativity is reflected in the technical reports that are published in scientific journals throughout the world. Fully 35% of them come from scientists doing their research at American institutions. Yet American dominance can no longer be taken for granted. Many recent U.S. achievements and awards stem in large measure from generous research grants of the past, and any weakening of government and industry commitment to support of basic research could in the next few decades cost the nation its scientific leadership. Some slipping is already divalent. In high-energy physics, where Americans once reigned supreme, Western Europe now spends roughly twice as much money as the U.S. Result: the major high-energy physics discoveries of the past few years have been made not by Americans but by Europeans. Even so, money alone cannot guarantee scientific supremacy. Freedom of inquiry, an intellectually stimulating environment and continuous recruitment of the best minds must accompany it. That combination has been achieved in many U.S. institutions-educational, governmental and industrial-but perhaps nowhere more successfully than at the National Institutes of Health, Bell Laboratories and Caltech. America's technological universities and government laboratories are generally______.