Isaac-Davy Aronson

Duke researchers say the reasons for a decline in health among recent immigrants may be more complicated than health experts thought. Duke Sociologist Jen'nan Read says researchers may have been drawing the wrong conclusion from data showing that immigrants arrive in the U.S. healthy and then become less so.

Wilmington's police chief says a new gunshot-detection technology is helping officers make arrests. The city used a federal grant to install the ShotSpotter system in November. Acoustic sensors around a 3-square-mile area detect gunshots and immediately relay the information to police. Chief Ralph Evangelous is urging the city council to continue ShotSpotter once the federal funding runs out next year. It would cost about $120,000 dollars. Officials in other cities where the system has been proposed have objected to the cost in a time of tight budgets. Evangelous disagrees.

One of the first openly gay ministers in the Presbyterian church will soon be ordained at a Chapel Hill church. Katie Ricks is the first openly lesbian pastor in the nation to gain approval since the Presbyterian Church began allowing homosexuals to serve last year. She met with the church's local governing body before its vote last weekend. She says she addressed some members' concerns that same-sex relationships are not accepted by God.

The 5th Annual Writers for Readers events take place in Chapel Hill, NC this weekend. The events are designed to raise awareness about literacy and raise funds for the Orange County Literacy Council. Local literary legend Lee Smith and writers Marisa de los Santos, Kevin Wilson and Robert Goolrick are featured at the upcoming festivities.

Following the Carolina Chocolate Drops big win at the 2010 Grammy Awards, founding member Justin Robinson left the band to take on new challenges. He enrolled in a graduate program, started a frozen dessert business and focused on making music with The Mary Annettes, a band he began working with while still with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Their new CD, “Bones for Tinder,” has just been released and it’s an eclectic blend of country, soul, folk and R&B.

We all do irrational things. Perhaps the strangest thing of all is convincing ourselves that we don’t. What if we embraced the irrationality of human decisions? Would we find that there are advantages to making illogical decisions? Duke University Professor Dan Ariely thinks so. In his book, “The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home” (Harper/ 2010), he shows how logic isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Guest host Isaac-Davy Aronson talks about the limits of logic with Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke.

The prospect of quadriplegics walking again once seemed like wishful thinking. The thought of a monkey’s brain controlling a robot was relegated to the realm of science fiction. But real science is always expanding the scope of the possible. Host Isaac-Davy Aronson talks to Miguel Nicolelis, professor of neuroscience at Duke University and founder of Duke’s Center for Neuroengineering, about how his research with monkeys may help millions of people to walk again.

Superhero Herald M.F. Jones attempts to take a night off from crime fighting to make time with the beautiful Belinda Goodall and attend an art exhibit and as his alter ego, Malik Fraser. But Jade City villain The Beef Cooka has other ideas and before long Jones is donning his green cape to save an innocent citizen.

Fayetteville, NC is a cauldron of controversy after the city council imposed a moratorium on consent searches. Simply stated, consent searches happen when police officers ask permission to search someone or their property. Racial profiling concerns sparked the council's move, but opponents of the moratorium stay it will stymie police effectiveness.

Naomi Benaron's new novel tells the tragic tale of Jean Patrick, a young Tutsi citizen of Rwanda in the years leading up to the genocide of the 1990s. Though he is part of an oppressed group in the country, Patrick's ability to run gives him an escape from the ordinary life of underprivilege common to his fellow Tutsis.