BOULDER, Colorado — Humming to himself, Charles Jones makes his way up a muddy hiking trail snaking through the Colorado foothills on an unseasonably warm winter day, his colleagues Dave Georgis and David Lohndorf following close behind. Part of the way up the trail, with the city of Boulder stretched below, Jones stops and smiles at the others, then at me. “Should we do a mood?” he asks.

Five-star Leafly app helps patients and consumers make informed choices about cannabis

SEATTLE -- Leafly, the world’s largest cannabis information resource, took first place in a recent ranking of 2016’s most popular wellness apps. In a survey of nearly 8,000 health and fitness apps, the app analytics company Applause found that Leafly was the highest-rated medical app in the iOS store and the third-most popular medical app overall. To earn the title, Leafly outranked numerous popular general interest health apps, including WebMD, Medscape, and Google Fit.

It's nearly that time of year. The annual occasion that brings together 16,000 laboratory scientists from industry, academia and government to discuss the latest trends in laboratory science. We're talking about Pittcon of course, the world’s largest annual premier conference and exposition on laboratory science. Pittcon never fails to deliver quality information and education that is used by the industry year-round. Let's see what some of the 2016 trends are:

Spark-Up Nation has a pretty good ring to it, don’t you think? Saul Kaye, the CEO of iCAN, certainly does.

For Kaye, whose company is holding its second annual CannTech conference on cannabis in Israel next month, the Jewish state is fertile ground for growing a cannabis economy.

“Israel is leading the world in research and development, from the medical side to the medical devices to the agro side,” he told The Jerusalem Post in the company’s co-working space in Beit Shemesh.

Indeed, Israel has been a leader in cannabis research.

Compared to the United States, where heavy regulation prohibits many forms of marijuana- related research, Israel’s regulatory framework has been somewhat more relaxed.

Cannabis extraction is a complex process, and could be considered dangerous without proper preparation.

Considering the most important safety precautions for any extract production facility, we should first identify the most common risks of extraction. Only by recognizing these process risks can the right steps be followed to ensure the safety of both employees and products.

HANOVER - A prominent Morris County physical therapist and entrepreneur is banking his future on the growth of the medical-cannabis testing industry. But rest assured, David Cunic has not gone from fixing joints to smoking them for a living.

"Most people say 'Oh, if you need a tester, I'll test a joint for you,' " said Cunic, a native of Denville and graduate of the Delbarton School, where he played varsity basketball with future NBA star Troy Murphy. "And I say, 'No, it's not that type of testing.' "

Cunic and his publicly-traded corporation, Pazoo Inc., are instead taking a scientific approach to testing medical cannabis in laboratories for potentially harmful impurities before the product is sold at legal dispensaries in states where medical marijuana is approved.

Legal marijuana has been having banner year after banner year since various states havelegalized the sale and consumption of the plant and its derivatives starting back in 2012 within Colorado and Washington. It should be noted that the process of marijuana’s status as a demonized drug has been slipping for much longer than the past 4 years.

As the state of California ventures into a new regulatory effort to track all marijuana grown and sold in the state, one of the key decisions before state officials is what kind of system it should deploy.

The Board of Equalization last week held a stakeholder hearing in Sacramento to explore the different systems currently being used by Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Illinois to regulate the cannabis industry.

“As a taxing agency, we’re concerned that taxes are applied correctly, and there’s really no way for us to do that correctly if we don’t have the ability to trace,” board member George Runner said at the hearing.

Tokken, a new Bitcoin company, is attempting to get involved in the marijuana industry from a financial standpoint. Tokken, founded by Lamine Zarrad, is using financial software to assist banks and pot dispensaries in monitoring transactions.

Unlike the major cannabinoids, terpenes don’t require a hefty level in cannabis to make their presence known. Additionally, terps are common to all subspecies of cannabis, meaning that they don’t play favorites between sativas and indicas.

Here’s a brief overview of the terpenes that play a major role in the scent and flavor of our favorite strains:

Limonene. Perhaps the most desirable terp present in cannabis, limonene is also found in a wide range of tropical fruits, particularly those of the citrus genus. Limonene is most common in lemons, oranges and limes, as well as in cannabis resin. This terpene explodes in the air when a fruit is peeled or buds are grinded. Ironically, plants use limonene to repulse predators.