Among the many kinds of pollution which besiege us today, noise pollution is often overlooked.

The human ear is a finely tuned mechanism able to distinguish over 1500 separate musical tones.

An important part of our hearing mechanism is the hair bundle found in the inner ear.  These hairs, called stereo cilia, convert the vibrations which hit the ear drum into an electrical nerve signal.  These messages are then relayed to the brain.

Recent work has shown that these ear hairs have the ability to regenerate.  They are totally replaced every two days.  Many rock music fans have reason to be thankful that these delicate hair bundles can regrow, because excessive noise will damage them.

Temporary hearing loss is associated with very loud sounds.  It's now thought that one of the main causes of this transient deafness is damage to ear hair bundles.  The turnover rate of forty-eight hours needed for regrowth is about the same as the recovery time from noise-induced hearing loss.

It's hoped that these findings will throw light on the development of hearing in newborn babies.  It may also explain why teenage rock fans sometimes have a hard time tuning back to the more subtle sounds of everyday life.

So next time you encounter a bedlam of sound, be thankful that nature has ways to protect your hearing from irreversible damage.

MOVING BEYOND MATTER
by Christopher Shennan

Just as nature has a mechanism for the ear to recover from excessive noise, so our emotions have a built-in ability to recover from shock or grief.

We have all heard the maxim: "Time is a great Healer."  And while it is too simplistic to say "time heals all," most of us have experienced the diminishing of grief over time, or gradual recovery after traumatic experience.

True, the sense of loss and subsequent loneliness after a loved one dies never goes away completely, but the passing of time almost always restores our balance, at least. We are able to function normally again, in spite of an occasional ache of remembrance.

Just as a bomb blast or dynamite explosion can cause permanent hearing loss, so some people never recover from emotional trauma.  Sometimes the shock is just too great.  Yet it is amazing how strong our emotional defense mechanisms can be.  If they were not, we would all be in a lot of trouble.

But time is not the only healer, or the most dramatic one.

Often people will point to someone whom they consider a bad character and say, "He will never change," or, "There is no hope for her."  If such statements were true many of us would find ourselves in the depths of despair.  Few of us are completely content with the way we are.  

The apostle Paul was a man who persecuted Christians and hounded them to death.  The he changed. He became a new person, transformed by the very message he had once opposed.

A friend told me about a man named Bob, who was a trained assassin in the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in the 1950s.  The shock to his psyche of taking human lives, was catastrophic.  The burden of guilt was unbearable.  But for Bob, the answer came when he responded to the message of forgiveness through the Lord Jesus Christ.  His burden of guilt fell away.  He found forgiveness and healing.

If you have looked at some people and considered them "hopeless" cases, perhaps it is time to look again.