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"our cette cinquantième édition de notre chronique hebdo des données belles à regarder, nous vous emmenons en Italie, en Afrique du Sud, en Afghanistan et au coeur de la Maison Blanche, une bière à la main... Et un voyage dans le datajournalisme du XIXè siècle en bonus "

And the future of robotics education in Africa is ... Chupa Chups? When the African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge this summer, co-founder Ken Goldberg was careful not to share too many expectations, lest he influence contestants' designs. But he never imagined one of the winning entries would prominently feature a pair of Spanish lollipops. The challenge, hosted by AFRON co-founders Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah, emphasized inexpensive designs to help bring robotics education to African classrooms. Goldberg announced AFRON's 10 winners in three categories today at Maker Faire, including the lollipop-laden Suckerbot and traditional (roaming) category first prize winner Kilobot, a Harvard-spawned three-legged, vibrating, swarming robot.

Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, Missouri farmer Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step he's taking to write instruction sets for an entire self-sustaining farm operation with equipment costs of under $10,000.

BM Research - Africa will have its first location in Nairobi, Kenya in collaboration between the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) through the Kenya ICT Board. It will conduct basic and applied research focused on solving problems relevant to Africa and contribute to the building of a science and technology base for the continent.   "IBM's commitment to undertake the proposed research agenda will contribute greatly to our national priorities as part of Kenya's Vision 2030," said His Excellency Honorable Mwai Kibaki, President of Kenya. "We look forward to delivering world-class research and innovation as part of IBM's Smarter Planet initiative and playing an important role as an IT leader on the African continent." 

"Local programmers and homegrown business models are helping to realize the vast promise of using phones to improve health care and save lives."