The $5.6 billion Panama Canal expansion created an unprecedented opportunity for Smithsonian scientists to collect thousands of fossils and to study invasive species, environmental services and climate change. The post-panamax ships going through the canal will have less chance of colliding with whale mothers and their calfs as a result of another Smithsonian study.

Although red-eyed tree frog embryos appear helpless within their jelly-coated eggs, they can hatch up to two days ahead of schedule, reacting within seconds to attacks by egg thieves. At the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, scientists used high-speed video to uncover their rapid-hatching secret.

Professor Edward Witten, has been selected as the winner of the Albert Einstein World Award of Science and Professor Kalevi Ekman, will be awarded with the Jose Vasconcelos World Award of Education. The World Cultural Council's 33rd Award Ceremony will take place on Friday, Oct. 14, in Riga, Latvia. It will be held in conjunction with the celebrations of the 154th anniversary of Riga Technical University at the Latvian National Library.

Using a reverse paint-by-numbers approach, scientists have located another gene that controls the brilliant patterning of Heliconius butterfly wings. Led by former Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute fellow Nicole Nadeau, the researchers identified variations in the gene that correspond to wing color and pattern variation in three different Heliconius species. Published in Nature, June 2016, the discovery puts scientists a step closer to unlocking the code responsible for diversity and evolution in butterflies and moths.

A biosensor developed by researchers at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory in Campinas, Brazil, has been proven capable of detecting molecules associated with neurodegenerative diseases and some types of cancer. The device is a single-layer organic nanometer-scale transistor on a glass slide. It contains the reduced form of the peptide glutathione, which reacts in a specific way when it comes into contact with the enzyme glutathione S-transferase, linked to Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and breast cancer, among other diseases.