Things are heating up at New Hampshire's Keene State College, which is now using 100 percent used cooking oil to keep more than a third of its campus warm. Officials say the college's decision to replace their polluting heating fuel oil with purified waste vegetable oil both supports a local business and improves the air quality around campus. The college uses the new carbon-neutral fuel for heat and hot water, and intends to increase its use of the alternative fuel in the coming years. Officials say the cost is comparable to the old oil once renewable energy incentives are factored in.

Climate change's effect on wildfires

Climate change from human activity nearly doubled the area that burned in forest fires in the American West over the past 30 years, a new study has found, and larger, more intense fires are all but guaranteed in the years ahead. On public and privately owned forest lands, 23.5 million acres burned in the 11 Western states from 1984 to 2015. Climate change was responsible for roughly 10.4 million of those acres — an area 30 times the size of Los Angeles — because of hotter and drier conditions than otherwise would have occurred, the study from scientists at Columbia University and the University of Idaho found.

Eels travel at own pace on migration

Every year, when autumn sets in, eels travel downstream to the sea. Then they disappear. Researchers have struggled to understand what happens to European and American eels on the migration to their spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. It has been assumed that they arrive together in the spring. But a study of European eels finds that many arrive fashionably late and don't spawn until the next season. "It's just like people," said David Righton, a behavioral ecologist in Britain. "Some go fast, some go slow, and most are somewhere in the middle."

Quakes occur deep below Earth's surface

Scientists have found that earthquakes can occur much deeper below the Earth's surface than originally believed. Seismologists have long thought that earthquakes occur less than 12 to 15 miles underground. But the new research found evidence of quakes deeper than 15 miles, below the Earth's crust and in the mantle. Scientists studied data from sensors installed atop the Newport-Inglewood fault, one of the most dangerous in the Los Angeles Basin, and found quakes were occurring deep into the upper mantle. It appeared that the Newport-Inglewood fault extended even into the mantle — past the uppermost layer of the Earth, the crust, where earthquakes long have been observed. Study author Jean Paul Ampuero said the research raised the possibility that the Newport-Inglewood and others could see even more powerful earthquakes than expected.

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