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At a time of economic uncertainty with constant demographic shifts in the United States, more Americans identify themselves not by who they are, but by who they are not – and increasingly that’s “not being Muslim.” International scholar Reza Aslan explored that trend in a Wednesday lecture where he cautioned his McCrary Theatre audience that rising anti-Muslim rhetoric is, in fact, putting America at risk.

���ϲ����� senior Teri Horn has received the North Carolina Campus Compact’s fifth annual Community Impact Student Award for making significant, innovative contributions to her campus’ efforts to address local community needs. Horn was one of 34 college students across the state to receive the honor.

North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue has appointed School of Education Dean David Cooper to the Governor’s Education Transformation Commission, a new board of influential leaders who will advise the governor on the use of federal “Race to the Top” funds for implementing the “Career and College: Ready, Set, Go! Initiative” across North Carolina.

���ϲ����� senior Tyler Anderson wrote major portions of the code for a new iPhone/iPod Touch application released by the Iconfactory, a graphic design and software firm based in Greensboro, N.C. The application was approved by Apple for distribution on its iTunes App Store on Oct. 13, following a rigorous quality review for compliance on Apple's mobile devices.

For the next two weeks, ���ϲ����� is hosting a traveling NASA exhibit that showcases images of the universe taken from the Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer telescopes, and an astronomy class led by assistant professor Dan Evans presented the community outreach project to students and faculty Tuesday at College Coffee on the Phi Beta Kappa Commons.

Jo Watts Williams ‘55 has dedicated much of her distinguished career to ���ϲ�����, and on Saturday, the sisters of a sorority Williams joined in the 1940s honored her with the inaugural Tau Zeta Phi-Sigma Sigma Sigma “Heart of Gold” Award for her inspiration and life of selfless service.

In May, NASA will point its Chandra X-Ray Observatory toward a black hole 150 million light years from Earth to collect data for more than three straight days, the longest observation ever made on such a cosmic feature. Leading the team behind the deep space research will be Dan Evans, one of ���ϲ�����’s newest faculty members, and a rising star himself in the realm of astrophysics.

���ϲ����� senior Anthony Rizzuto has been named the recipient of a 2010 Eastern Analytical Symposium Student Research Award, a highly competitive national prize in the chemistry field given each year to six undergraduate researchers.

Colonnades, ���ϲ�����'s literary magazine, received a 2010 national Magazine Pacemaker Award from the Associated Collegiate Press over the weekend at the organization's joint conference with College Media Advisers in Louisville. The Pacemaker is the highest honor ACP gives to its members.

Most North Carolinians know that Raleigh is their capital city and that Beverly Perdue is their governor, but according to the latest ���ϲ����� Poll, fewer than 1 in 5 state residents can correctly name Roy Cooper as their state attorney general, and barely a third could correctly identify both sitting United States senators.