The proliferation of marijuana edibles for both medical and recreational purposes is giving rise to a cottage industry of baked goods, candies, infused oils, cookbooks and classes that promises a slow burn as more states legalize the practice and awareness spreads about the best ways to deliver the drug. Edibles and infused products such as snack bars, olive oils and tinctures popular with medical marijuana users have flourished into a gourmet market of chocolate truffles, whoopie pies and hard candies as Colorado and Washington legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the past year. Photo: In this Thursday, July 10, 2014, photo, Mike Fitzgerald, right, teaches behind a sample display of cannabis-infused products during a cooking class at the New England Grass Roots Institute in Quincy, Mass. (Photo by Michael Dwyer/AP Photo)

Beautiful, strange and occasionally alarming pictures from the shortlist for this year’s Wellcome image awards – which celebrate the very best in science photography and imaging – from an x-ray of a bat to a micrograph of a kidney stone. The exhibition opens on 12 March at three science centres and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. Photo: Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commonly known as thale cress. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Horizontal width of image is 1200 microns. Magnification 100x. (Photo by Stefan Eberhard/Wellcome Images)

A Pure Green Sweat Bee (Augochlora pura) covers itself in pollen while pollinating the flower of a squash plant in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on August 23, 2024. (Photo by Creative Touch Imaging Ltd/NurPhoto/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman poses for a photo at Hitchin Lavender farm in Ickleford, Britain, August 4, 2020. (Photo by Peter Cziborra/Reuters)

Melissa Foley clears debris and helps in her neighborhood as the San Lorenzo River rises with emergency evacuation orders in Felton Grove, California, U.S., January 14, 2023. (Photo by David Swanson/Reuters)

Zookeeper Agata holds a rare newborn Brazilian three-banded armadillo inside its enclosure at the Wroclaw Zoo in Wroclaw, Poland on May 11, 2023. The Tolypeutes matatus, or the southern armor also known as bolita or tatu-bola, is a fairly popular animal in South America but is increasingly rare. The new zoo child was born on March 23. The species is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and threatened by habitat loss and hunting. (Photo by Omar Marques/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Macaques huddle together for warmth at a hot spring in Nagano, Japan in the last decade of December 2023. Known as snow monkeys, the animals soak in the 40°C water every day during cold weather, spending their bathtime grooming, snoozing and playing on visitors’ camera tripods. (Photo by David Lazar/Animal News Agency)

This photo taken on July 13, 2023 shows a woman wearing traditional Uyghur attire posing for photos in the Old Kashgar tourist area in China's northwestern Xinjiang region. Chinese travellers throng the bazaars of old Kashgar, munching mutton kebabs and soaking up heavily commodified Uyghur culture – part of a government push to remould troubled Xinjiang into a tourism paradise. (Photo by Pedro Pardo/AFP Photo)