For new readers and those who request to be“好友 good friends”  please read my 公告栏 firstOutside of universities, Think Tanks are often referred  to as a university without students. The earliest think tank  after WWII is the famed RAND (stands for Research and  Development) Corporation of Santa Monica, California  set up by the US Airforce. Many key figures and ideas of game theory and operations research were developed  there (e.g., the names of Bellman, Shapely, and Isaacs  are forever associated with RAND). More recently, think tanks tends to be located in Washington DC, the seat of US power. ThinkTanks become more politically oriented  than methodologically centered. While universities often have endowment to provide permanent income, Think Tanks must rely more on non-stop fund raising  from either government or benefactors. Thus PR  (public relation) skills are important for her leaders. Speaking about universities, in the US, foreign students  play an increasingly important source of university  income. For example, in Massachusetts various institutions of higher learning collect 2 billion dollars a year from foreign students. Next to the US, the 2^nd and 3^rd choice  for foreign students are Canada and Australia.  Not surprisingly, Chinese are #1 foreign students source for US colleges. Nowadays, increasingly Chinese  foreign students are high school age (小留學生). I have written previously about them http://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-1565-1042211.html . Finally,in this globalized, fully connected world of “Future Shock”, staying still means being left behind. One must  not stop learning and constantly refresh your skill. As a result, various learning organizations, temporary or otherwise,sprung up to educate the adult population.  These range from community sponsored adult education courses, company sponsored training  program, refresher courses offered by professional  societies, and so on.  “Learning just to stay in place” becomes a way of life until retirement. The advent of AI further accentureates this trend. Staying relevant for life in this age is not an easy task.