The answer to protecting and saving marine(海洋) wildlife can start with cutting back on something Americans use every day—plastic drinking straws. Actor Adrien Grenier, best known for playing Vincent Chase in 2015 movie Entourage, has launched a campaign to reduce the amount of single-use plastic usage in this country in order to protect and save marine wildlife and the environment. Plastic drinking straws are among many single-use plastic products contributing to the shocking loss of marine life, but they're a great place to start because they're something Americans are using by the hundreds of millions without any awareness that they're so damaging.

According to Ecocycle, an international environmental organization, Americans use more than 500 million straws daily, which are enough to fill 127 school buses each day, and they can't be recycled. They means plastic straws end up in landfills or oceans, where fish and other marine wildlife mistake the small bits for food and swallow them. After seeing a photo of a whale beached on the shore with a belly full of plastic, Grenier felt the inspiration to launch the Lonely Whale Foundation, hoping to inspire and educate others on the challenges facing marine life.

     Along with stopping the use of straws, Grenier hopes to educate consumers on the dangers of other single-use plastic items such as grocery bags and water bottles. While many Americans use these plastic products in their daily life, there are more sustainable alternatives that can help protect the environment. Ecocycle recommends the use of straws made from stainless steel, glass, and even bamboo instead of plastic. You can buy a number of these environmentally friendly straws online and in stores.

Things to Do in Atlanta This Weekend

    Start the year off by experiencing something new this weekend! Here are our favorite events picked for this weekend.

The Glenn Miller Orchestra at Spivey Hall, Saturday

    The music of Glenn Miller has an unusual sound. Combine that with the perfect sound affects at Spivey Hall, and you get a concert that is sure to have your toes tapping. And really, who doesn't love Challanooga Choo Choo?

Garden Lights at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Saturday

    This is the last night for this annual light show at the Atlanta Botanical Garden. It is particularly unusual that the magical sound of frogs in the conservatory(温室) is not from a recording. That magic is coming from the real frogs that live there. If it's no too crowded, stop along the way, close your eyes and just listen.

    Children's Workshop: Egyptian Hieroglyphs(象形文字), Saturday

   Does your child dream of becoming a historian when he grows up? If you answer “yes”, you will want to take him to the Michael C. Carlos Museum. Participants will learn how to read and write ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs from Egyptologist Annie Shanley. Children will have an opportunity to discover the meaning of hieroglyphs on tomb reliefs and statues.

Colin Mochrie at Dad's Garage Theatre, Saturday and Sunday

    Set the tone for a great 2017 with laughter. Colin Mochrie comes to Dad's Garage Theatre and brings his lightning-quick creativity and humor.

    If you want to look at all the events happening this weekend, check out our full events calendar.

    I look around and can't recognize where I am. It seems familiar but distant. I see my friends gather by a stage where music is playing and I run over. As I begin running towards them, they become further and further away. I keep calling them, but no one hears me. I start hearing a distant alarm-like sound and I am transported away. I woke up in a daze sitting in my bed.

    “Oh, it was only a dream,” I said to myself. I have always had vivid and intense dreams. It feels like I haven't even slept because I have been living out my dreams during my sleep.

    Today, dreaming is being studied even more than ever. Some say that dreams are how your receptors make sense of random thoughts while you sleep. Some say that you can't dream of a face you have never seen before, so everyone you see in your dreams you have at least laid eyes on at one time or another.

    Other people think dreams are ways of expressing stress or internal feelings you may be experiencing. A lot of people say that they have dreams about being chased.

    A common interpretation of the “being chased” dream is that you are feeling threatened. Some dream interpretation websites say you should try to reflect on what or who is chasing you to get a better idea of what is making you feel this way.

    Another dream that is often experienced is flying. This dream has a much more positive interpretation, which is that you are feeling free or have broken out of a bad situation such as a relationship turned sour or a job you hate.

Unfortunately, you may forget half of your dream within five minutes of waking up and within 10 minutes, you usually forget 90 percent of it.

    Dreamologists, people who devote time to the study and interpretation of dreams, suggest if you want to try to remember and study your dreams you should keep a journal beside your bed and write down what you dreamt as soon as you wake up so you can reflect on it later.

    Letters as a way of communication have long given way to phone calls and WeChat messages.

    But a TV show, Letters Alive, is helping bring this old way to keep in touch back into the present.

    Letters Alive took its idea from a UK program with a similar name, Letters Live, which was first shown in 2013. Both shows feature famous actors and actresses, but there is no gossip , no eye-catching visual effects or any regular showbiz (演艺圈) activities. Instead, it's just one person walking up to a microphone and reading a letter.

    But these are not just any letters. They are selected from a wide time span and a diverse range of subjects. There is, for example, a passionate letter that famous painter Huang Yongyu wrote to playwright Cao Yu 30 years ago to criticize his lack of creativity. There is also a heartfelt note from Spring and Autumn Period written by two ordinary young soldiers to their elder brother to report their lives in the war zone.

    Every letter is like a small piece of history. By hearing them being read, it's as if we are being sent back in time to experience a moment that we would otherwise never have had the chance to.

    “Letters Live makes us pause and imagine the lives behind the letters,” UK actor Benedict Cumberbatch, one of the readers on the UK show, told The Guardian. “It allows people from all ages and all walks of life to experience a moment of time in someone else's life for a brief moment.”

    Compared to published texts, letters also come with a personal touch.

    One example from Letters Live was a note of thanks from the mother of a dying child to JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. It read: “Mrs Rowling, Cancer threatened to take everything from my daughter, and your books turned out to be the castle we so desperately needed to hide in.”

    According to Guan Zhengwen, the director of Letters Alive, it is this kind of humanity behind every letter that strikes a chord (引发共鸣) with the audience. It is also what made the show a big hit in China ever since its first episode aired on Dec 5.

    “It's a thing of the past that entertainment shows establish themselves only with pretty faces,” Guan told Sohu News. “Showbiz is starting to switch to a focus on wisdom and intelligence.

    The world's first hydrogen-powered trains have begun running in Germany. They began carrying passengers Monday in Germany's northern Lower Saxony state. The new train will run 100-kilometer trips and can travel up to 140 kilometers an hour.

    A French railroad company called Alstom built the two trains. Team in Germany and France cooperated on the project, which was supported by the German government. The new train model ,called the Coradia ilint, signals the beginning of efforts in Germany and other nations to move away from pollution-producing diesel(柴油) trains.

    The Coradia iLint is designed to run on non-electrified train lines with low levels of noise.

    It uses a process that combines hydrogen and oxygen to produce electrical power. If the system produces more energy than the train needs at that time, it can store the extra energy in batteries. The only emissions (排放物) are water and steam.

    A single tank of hydrogen can run a Coradia iLint train for about 1,000 kilometers. This is very similar to the distance a diesel-powered train can run on with a single tank.

    Hydrogen-powered trains cost more than diesel trains to build. But Alstom officials say the operating costs are much lower. The company plans to provide another 14 Coradia iLint trains to Lower Saxony by 2021.

    The head of railroad operations in the area, Carmen Schwab, praised replacing diesel trains with hydrogen. She said the move was an important first step in using clean-burning technologies to reach climate protection goals.

    Officials say the area's many wind turbines (涡轮机)will produce part of the energy to create the hydrogen to power the trains.

    Alstom says several other European countries have also expressed interest in developing hydrogen train systems. France has already said it wants its first hydrogen train to be operating by 2022.

    Last summer, after finishing my work in China, I took the trip of a lifetime on the Trans-Siberian Railway (西伯利亚铁路). Leaving Beijing early on a Wednesday morning in July, my wife and I travelled through some awesome (令人惊叹的) countryside before we arrived in Moscow the following Monday.

    The first part of the journey took us past the Great Wall and through the grasslands of Inner Mongolia. At the Mongolian Republic border, we had a delay(耽搁)while the wheels were changed because the railway is different.

    On our way to the capital, Ulan Bator, we saw herdsmen (牧人) on horseback looking after their cattle. There was a great thunderstorm as we crossed a vast open plain. Later we had a quick tour of Ulan Bator.

    Next, the train took us into Siberia. After a stop at Irkutsk, a popular holiday resort(度假胜地), where a tour group left the train, we passed the great Lake Baikal. Later, we saw some lovely wooden houses in pretty, sunny countryside. This surprised us, as we had imagined Siberia as being covered with thick snow.

    Over the next few days, we passed through Novosibirsk, Omsk and other cities in the heartlands of the Russian Federation. By now, our body clocks were losing their sense of time. We wanted to sleep and eat at the wrong time!

    At last we reached Moscow. We were so tired that we slept for 16 hours that night. The next day we went sightseeing. We saw the Dremlin and some other magnificent (宏伟的) buildings in the Russian capital. Then, all too soon, it was time for us to return to our home in London.