ABOVE: MODIFIED FROM ©iStock.com, Dani3315

         
Click the puzzle for a full-size, interactive version.
Note: The answer grid will include every letter of the alphabet. 
BY EMILY COX AND HENRY RATHVON

We’ve had an era of genetic discovery and now we’re on the threshold of a new era of precision psychiatry which could offer more effective drugs for patients, and could help clinicians to better diagnose and treat these complex conditions. 

—Eske Derks, head of the Translational Neurogenomics Laboratory at the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute (formerly the Queensland Institute of Medical Research), in an institutional press release about a Nature Genetics study she coauthored focused on key challenges to transforming genetic discoveries into clinical treatments for mental health conditions (September 27)
ACROSS

1. Common bivalve mollusc 
4. Small member of the carp family 8. Resinous exudate known for its fragrance 
9. System subject to Hubble’s law 
10. Cloudy area in a lens 
11. Paleo, for one 
12. Carrier of deoxygenated blood from the head (2 wds.) 
15. Strigiformes members 
17. Rigid airship first flown in 1900 
20. 1/3 x base area x height, for a pyramid 
21. Max who pioneered quantum theory 
22. Like sultana grapes 
23. Cosmic building material 

DOWN

2. Andean camelid 
3. Free-roaming horse of the American West 
4. Greek letter symbolizing a photon 
5. Having less density 
6. Lion or tiger 
7. Base of the hexadecimal number system 
12. Mandible 
13. Common term for amblyopia (2 wds.) 
14. Variety of beryl 
16. Eight-armed, two-tentacled cephalopod 
18. Vocal cords, colloquially
19. Bone of the middle ear 

Some colleagues are sceptical and cannot understand why we have revealed the finding before formally publishing it. But this is post-normal science. We have very little time to act—we can-not wait one or two years, it could already be too late. 

—Jonathan Barichivich, a climate scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), speaking to The Guardian about his recent assertion that 30-meter-tall alerce tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) is more than 5,000 years old, based on a core sample he took from its trunk (September 23)
          Cartoon of a doctor performing a check-up on an old tree holding a wooden cane.
© JONNY HAWKINS