The wonder material we all need but is running out – BBC Future

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The wonder material we all need but is running out – BBC Future

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Natural rubber is a uniquely tough, flexible and highly waterproof material. It puts tyres on our vehicles, soles on our shoes, it makes seals for engines and refrigerators, insulates wires and other electrical components. It is used in condoms and clothing, sports balls and the humble elastic bands. Over the past year it has played a pivotal role in the pandemic in personal protective equipment worn by doctors and nurses around the world.

In fact, rubber is deemed to be a commodity of such global importance that it is included on the EU's list of critical raw materials.

Unfortunately, there are signs the world might be running out of natural rubber. Disease, climate change and plunging global prices have put the world's rubber supplies into jeopardy. It has led scientists to search for a solution before it's too late.

Counties.

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I learned something new (sort of) today…

Between the bars

There are 38 counties in New York that operate without charters, however only 16 of them still use Boards of Supervisors as their law-making body, consisting of the elected supervisors of their towns and cities, using weighted votes. A local example would be Saratoga County.

Some counties without charters have county legislatures — 22 in total. Clinton County for example has a County Legislature based on “Areas” the term they use for districts locally. While they have an elected County Legislature, they do not have a County Charter or an County Executive.

I am a big fan of TableauScraper, which is super helpful for government agencies, namely the NYS Department of Health, I’m speaking to you, that wants to appear transparent but not really and make it difficult to download their data

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I am a big fan of TableauScraper, which is super helpful for government agencies, namely the NYS Department of Health, I’m speaking to you, that wants to appear transparent but not really and make it difficult to download their data. But with TableauScraper it’s pretty easy to get their data. I use the TableauScraper prompt.py script to download the Tableau, prompt me for the table I want to select, then added a few line to dump the Panda into a CSV file. I won’t say I rewrote the book on this one, but it works for my purposes.

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 The following script will get the session token, get the data,
# prompt the user to select a worksheet, parse the data into a dataframe
import json
import pandas as pd
import argparse
from tableauscraper import TableauScraper as TS
import os

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument(
    "-get",
    "--get",
    choices=["dashboard", "dropdown", "select"],
    help="type of action",
    required=True,
)
parser.add_argument("-url", "--url", help="full tableau url", required=True)
args = parser.parse_args()

ts = TS()
ts.loads(args.url)

# checkout the json data
# with open('data.json', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
#    json.dump(ts.data, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=4)
# with open('info.json', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
#    json.dump(ts.info, f, ensure_ascii=False, indent=4)

if args.get == "dashboard":
    dashboard = ts.promptDashboard()
elif args.get == "dropdown":
    dashboard = ts.promptDropdown()
elif args.get == "select":
    dashboard = ts.promptSelect()

with pd.option_context(
    "display.max_rows", None, "display.max_columns", 5, "display.width", 1000
):
    for idx, worksheet in enumerate(dashboard.worksheets):
        if idx == 0:
            print("|" + ("-" * (os.get_terminal_size().columns - 2)) + "|")
        print("|" + worksheet.name.center(os.get_terminal_size().columns - 2) + "|")
        print("|" + ("-" * (os.get_terminal_size().columns - 2)) + "|")
        print(worksheet.data)
        print("")
        # selectable values
        selectableColumns = worksheet.getSelectableColumns()
        print(f"selectable columns for this worksheet : {len(selectableColumns)}")
        for columnName in selectableColumns:
            print("&bull; " + columnName)
            # for value in worksheet.getValues(columnName):
            # 	print("t&bull;" + value)

        print("")
        print("|" + ("-" * (os.get_terminal_size().columns - 2)) + "|")
        
        csvpath="/tmp/tableau.csv"
        print("nWorksheet Data Exported to "+csvpath+"...n")
        
        worksheet.data.to_csv(csvpath)

    # dropdown list
    dropdownInputs = dashboard.getDropdownInputs()
    print(f"drop down lists for this dashboard : {len(dropdownInputs)}")
    for inputName in dropdownInputs:
        print("&bull; " + inputName)
        for inputValue in dashboard.getDropdownValues(inputName):
            print("t&bull; " + inputValue)