Portland area rental owners association

Airbnb is cracking down on house parties and events in properties listed on its platform to try to better follow local health departments’ social distancing requirements for large gatherings, the company said in a blog post Thursday . It’s imposing an occupancy cap of 16 people, and hosts or renters on the platform who try to evade the new rules risk being banned from the platform or even the possibility of legal action. With local health departments reacting to the coronavirus cases in their areas, many implemented restrictions on the number of people allowed in bars and restaurants. Airbnb said it found people were taking “bar and club behavior” to homes rented on its platform. “We think such conduct is incredibly irresponsible — we do not want that type of business, and anyone engaged in or allowing that behavior does not belong on our platform,” Airbnb said in its post Thursday. The company says while some of its host properties permit small gatherings such as birthday … [Read more...] about Airbnb puts global ban on house parties to support social distancing guidelines

A recent study from the Environmental Working Group found that the drinking water in 89 percent of surveyed U.S. cities had detectable amounts of hexavalent chromium, a likely carcinogen. But environmental health experts say the public shouldn't be alarmed because the amounts of chromium the study found are likely too low to cause cancer in most people, though past research has linked ingestion of hexavalent chromium with cancer in animals. "Modern analytical chemistry can detect concentrations of carcinogens in water that are unimportant," said Allan Smith, director of the Arsenic Health Effects Research Program at University of California, Berkeley. The EWG study found that 31 of 35 surveyed cities — including Honolulu, Pittsburgh and Tallahassee, Fla. — had hexavalent chromium in their drinking water. Past studies have shown that hexavalent chromium — different from trivalent chromium, which is an essential nutrient to our bodies — can cause cancer when inhaled. … [Read more...] about Can Chromium in Drinking Water Cause Cancer?

During the Jurassic period, long-necked dinosaurs migrated hundreds of miles across what is now the American Midwest, a new study finds. How do researchers know that these giant beasts migrated? The dinosaurs gulped down pink stones in what is now Wisconsin, trekked westward more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) and then died in the area that's now Wyoming, leaving the stones in a new location. "We believe [that these stones] were transported from southern Wisconsin to north-central Wyoming in the belly of a dinosaur," study lead researcher Josh Malone, a graduate student in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin, told Live Science. This new finding is "one of, if not the longest inferred examples of [nonavian] dinosaur migration" on record, added study co-researcher Michael D'Emic, an associate professor in the Department of Biology at Adelphi University in New York. Related: Photos: School-bus-size dinosaur discovered in Egypt … [Read more...] about Long-necked dinosaurs migrated hundreds of miles, ‘stomach stones’ reveal

The iPhone 12 represents a stark departure from its predecessors, courtesy of a completely refreshed design and some notably improved components. With many an iPhone XR owner due for an upgrade after a long two-year contract, it’s the iPhone 12 that’s likely to be in their crosshairs. So how much of a step up does the iPhone 12 present? And is the iPhone XR still a viable purchase in 2021? The two-year gap between the release of these handsets represents a long time in the smartphone world. Let’s see if Apple has put that development time to good use. iPhone 12 vs iPhone XR price and availability The iPhone 12 landed in shops on October 23, 2020. Prices for Apple’s current flagship range from $799 / £799 / AU$1,349 for the 64GB model, to $949 / £949 / AU$1,599 for 256GB. The 128GB model tucked in-between costs $849 / £849 / AU$1,429. Two years prior to the iPhone 12 hitting shops, the iPhone XR went on sale. From October 26, 2018, you could grab the 64GB model for $749 … [Read more...] about iPhone 12 vs iPhone XR: two years is a long time in smartphones

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me... They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are...” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that in 1925 in a short story called The Rich Boy . Today, some highly touted recent research seems to prove him right, indicating that those with higher incomes are less generous than those with lower incomes. But the new study shows that the upper echelons of society are not simply peopled by greedier, less moral individuals; the rich are merely tight fisted when they are surrounded by actual or even perceived income inequality. As different as they may be, they seem to be as susceptible to their surroundings as the rest of us. Researchers at the University of Toronto and Stanford decided to revisit the reams of data from psychological experiments demonstrating that money is just as corrupting a force as power and that high earners are selfish. Instead, they suspected that being surrounded by vast economic … [Read more...] about The rich are less generous when they think there’s high economic inequality