Pax Labs, the San Francisco maker of a popular electronic cigarette, announced $46.7 million in new funding Wednesday — a sign of investor confidence not only in the booming vaporizer market but also in the marijuana industry.

Formerly known as Ploom, the maker of the Pax and JUUL vaporizers will use the investment to expand its technology into other spaces as well as expand its current products overseas. Currently, the product is only sold in the U.S. and Canada.

Though cannabis in general has a learning curve, perhaps the most intimidating and mysterious aspect for new users is concentrates.

When a customer walks into a medical dispensary or recreational shop looking to try something new, a query about concentrates often results in a barrage of unfamiliar terms, and he or she has little to no frame of reference for quality, dosage, expected effects or ways to consume.

Montreal-based Affinor Growers to showcase its vertical farming technology

MONTREAL— Affinor Growers, a diversified agriculture and biotechnology company, which is perhaps better known as a legal marijuana grower, has announced a cooperative research and development agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The agreement will allow the USDA Agricultural Research Service to work with Affinor’s vertical farming technology at its facility in Kearneysville, W.V. and at Affinor’s controlled environment in Quebec. The ARS will use Affinor’s proprietary vertical farming systems to grow not marijuana, but strawberries.

Wana Products on Tuesday announced the launch of WanaCaps XR, a family of extended release cannabis capsules that provide medicinal benefits for up to 12 hours.

Wana Products partnered with Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc., a United States-based Drug Development Company with research and development in Israel, that developed the proprietary technology behind the extended release formulation.

WanaCaps XR will be offered in three different formulations: capsules with a 10:1 CBD to THC ratio (WanaCaps XR High CBD Capsules), a 10:1 THC to CBD ratio (WanaCaps XR High THC Capsules), and a balanced formulation with 1:1 THC:CBD ratio (WanaCaps XR THC/CBD Balanced Capsules).

The hype over hemp that erupted last year during Colorado’s first sensational flirtations with the marijuana look-alike is now starting to live up to expectations. A handful of growers in 2014 planted and harvested small-scale crops that attracted large-scale attention under hemp’s newly legal status.

This year, hype is being replaced with indicators of hemp’s industrial potential as seen in farm fields, factories, retail outlets and university laboratories. Hemp and its byproducts have a wide range of uses in nutrition, clothing, building materials, cosmetics and health.

The sector still is too tiny to rate even an asterisk in most conventional measures such as crop value and retail sales in Colorado.

JOHNSTOWN, Ohio -- Andy Joseph didn't seek the marijuana industry -- it found him.

The Navy veteran and father of five began building botanical oil extraction systems from his home northeast of Columbus while working as an engineering director for a manufacturing company. The systems were made to extract essential oils and natural flavorings from plants such as lavender, spearmint and peppers.

But entrepreneurs in California found another use for Joseph's machines -- extracting chemicals from marijuana that could be used in hundreds of products. Joseph's business grew as more states legalized marijuana, leading him to quit his job in 2012 to run Apeks Supercritical out of a 2,000-square-foot pole barn in his backyard.

The discovery of penicillin wasn’t enough in itself to change the world: it first had to be made into a medicine, and then distributed to humanity. This leap is one that many breakthroughs and inventions by Spanish scientists working at the country’s universities very often fail to make. Research that could improve lives, such as flour for people with celiac disease, a self-driving tractor, or a kit for analyzing wine and beer, and that have taken years to develop and cost millions of euros, are either never developed, or are taken abroad.

CARNEYS POINT, NJ -- (Marketwired) -- 06/17/15 -- CannaPharmaRx, Inc. (OTCQB: CPMD), a leader in the research, development, and commercialization of cannabinoid-based drug products, announced today that it will be exhibiting at the 2nd Annual Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo. The conference will be held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, NY from Wednesday, June 17 through Friday, June 19. CannaPharmaRx will exhibit in booth # 316.

With These Two Missile Threats, There's Only One Stock to Buy

We’ve given you many reasons to like Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AJRD), a company whose stock we recommended at $11.40 a share back in February 2013, when it was still known as GenCorp Inc.

Now we’re about to give you two more.

They’re both “ripped from the headlines.”

Marijuana Business Daily posted last week’s chart of the week, showing statistics from their Marijuana Business Factbook 2015. Cannabis cultivation in the US is still dominated by indoor marijuana growing facilities. Perhaps what is even more surprising than the domination of indoor grow ops over greenhouse marijuana growers, is that outdoor marijuana production is also six times greater than the marijuana production in greenhouses.