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JACKSONVILE, Fla. ? Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says he was vastly closer to President Ronald Reagan than his opponents.
Gingrich says he worked with Reagan when he was in Congress and is proud to have the endorsement of Michael Reagan, Ronald Reagan’s oldest son. Gingrich also says that he was “fighting in the trenches” while Reagan was president.
The former House speaker is contrasting himself with rival Mitt Romney, who he says was voting in a Democratic primary while Gingrich worked with Reagan.
Romney says he’s always voted for Republicans when he could, though he voted when he was an independent in a Democratic primary. He says it’s reasonable to say that Gingrich was closer to Reagan because Gingrich was in Congress while Reagan was president.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2012) ? In a study published in the journal Geology, scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggest that the large changes in the carbon isotopic composition of carbonates which occurred prior to the major climatic event more than 500 million years ago, known as ‘Snowball Earth,’ are unrelated to worldwide glacial events.
“Our study suggests that the geochemical record documented in rocks prior to the Marinoan glaciation or ‘Snowball Earth’ are unrelated to the glaciation itself,” said UM Rosenstiel professor Peter Swart, a co-author of the study. “Instead the changes in the carbon isotopic ratio are related to alteration by freshwater as sea level fell.”
In order to better understand the environmental conditions prior to ‘Snowball Earth’, the research team analyzed geochemical signatures preserved in carbonate rock cores from similar climactic events that happened more recently — two million years ago — during the Pliocene-Pleistocene period.
The team analyzed the ratio of the rare isotope of carbon (13C) to the more abundant carbon isotope (12C) from cores drilled in the Bahamas and the Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The geochemical patterns that were observed in these cores were nearly identical to the pattern seen prior to the Marinoan glaciation, which suggests that the alteration of rocks by water, a process known as diagenesis, is the source of the changes seen during that time period.
Prior to this study, scientists theorized that large changes in the cycling of carbon between the organic and inorganic reservoirs occurred in the atmosphere and oceans, setting the stage for the global glacial event known as ‘Snowball Earth’.
“It is widely accepted that changes in the carbon isotopic ratio during the Pliocene-Pleistocene time are the result of alteration of rocks by freshwater,” said Swart. “We believe this is also what occurred during the Neoproterozoic. Instead of being related to massive and complicated changes in the carbon cycle, the variations seen in the Neoproterozoic can be explained by simple process which we understand very well.”
Scientists acknowledge that multiple sea level fluctuations occurred during the Pliocene-Pleistocene glaciations resulting from water being locked up in glaciers. Similar sea-level changes during the Neoproterozoic caused the variations in the global carbon isotopic signal preserved in the older rocks, not a change in the distribution of carbon as had been widely postulated.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- P. K. Swart, M. J. Kennedy. Does the global stratigraphic reproducibility of ?13C in Neoproterozoic carbonates require a marine origin? A Pliocene-Pleistocene comparison. Geology, 2011; 40 (1): 87 DOI: 10.1130/G32538.1
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120127140523.htm
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The Pentagon unveiled a 2013 budget plan that would cut $487 billion in spending over the next decade by eliminating nearly 100,000 ground troops, mothballing ships and trimming air squadrons in a bid to create a smaller, agile force with a new strategic focus.
The funding request, which includes painful cuts that will be felt across the country, comes at a historic turning point for the military as it winds down 10 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq and shifts its strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.
The budget plan, sharply criticized by some lawmakers, sets the stage for a new struggle between President Barack Obama’s administration and Congress over how much the Pentagon should spend on national security as the country tries to curb its trillion-dollar budget deficits.
“Make no mistake, the savings that we are proposing will impact all 50 states and many districts, congressional districts across America,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told a news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday.
“This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action.”
Panetta, previewing a budget to be made public February 13, said he would ask for a $525 billion base budget for the 2013 fiscal year, the first time since before the September 11, 2001, attacks that the Pentagon has asked for less than the previous year. That compares with $531 billion approved this year.
Panetta said he would seek $88.4 billion to support overseas combat operations, primarily in Afghanistan, down from $115 billion in 2012 largely due to the end of the war in Iraq and the withdrawal of U.S. forces there at the end of last year.
Congress ultimately controls the Pentagon’s purse strings and regularly intervenes to change the size and detail of military spending as it sees fit. The Defense Department’s budget accounts for about 20 percent of total federal spending.
Republican lawmakers who oversee military affairs on Capitol Hill sharply criticized the plan.
Senator John McCain said it “ignored the lessons of history” by imposing massive cuts on the military, and Representative Buck McKeon said it reflected “Obama’s vision of an America that is weakened, not strengthened, by our men and women in uniform.”
MORE CUTS TO COME?
The 2013 budget is Panetta’s first as defense secretary and is the first to take into account the Budget Control Act passed by Congress in August that requires the Pentagon to cut $487 billion in projected spending over the next decade.
The budget plan does not take into account an additional $600 billion in defense cuts that could be required after Congress failed to pass a compromise agreement to cut government spending by $1.2 trillion. The Pentagon could face cuts of another $50 billion a year, starting in 2013, unless Congress changes the law.
Panetta said he hoped once lawmakers understood the sacrifice involved in reducing the defense budget by almost a half a trillion dollars, they would make sure to avoid another $500 billion in additional cuts that would “inflict severe damage to our national defense for generations.”
The budget begins to flesh out a new military strategy announced by the Pentagon earlier this month that calls for a shift in focus from the ground wars of the past decade towards efforts to preserve stability in the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East.
“To ensure an agile and ready force, we made a conscious choice not to maintain more force structure than we could afford to properly train and equip,” Panetta said.
The budget plan would provide new challenges for the Pentagon’s top suppliers, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. The Arca index of defense stocks closed Thursday down 0.7 percent.
The plan retains but slows the purchase of weapons like Lockheed’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon’s largest procurement program, as well as submarines, amphibious assault ships and other vessels. It would retain a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers.
The Pentagon would boost its emphasis on special operations forces like those who carried out the raid in Pakistan that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden last year and rescued two aid workers this week from kidnappers in Somalia.
It would also increase its emphasis on cyber operations, expand its work on drone aircraft, go ahead with a long-range bomber and proceed with other weapons that would allow it to project power from a greater distance.
Those capabilities are needed as countries like Iran and China develop arms that could threaten U.S. aircraft carriers in international waters near their shores.
General Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned against “parsing through each cut, each change, to look for a winner or loser,” saying the plan should be judged for how it adapts the military to a changing security environment.
While the cuts announced on Thursday would affect all major defense contractors, consultant Loren Thompson said shipbuilders would be hit particularly hard because of the plan to cut 16 vessels from the total planned for the next five years.
The plans could affect work flow at Huntington Ingalls’ shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Newport News, Virginia.
The size of the active-duty Army would be trimmed to 490,000 over five years from its wartime peak of 570,000 in 2010 and the size of the Marine Corps would fall to 182,000 from its high of about 202,000.
Military pay increases would begin to slow after two more years of growth, and fees would be increased on healthcare benefits for military retirees, those who served more than 20 years, both above and below the age of 65.
In addition, the Pentagon would:
– Delay development of a new ballistic missile submarine by two years.
– Eliminate six of the Air Force’s tactical-air fighter squadrons and retire or divest 130 aircraft used for moving troops and equipment.
– Retire seven Navy cruisers and two smaller amphibious ships early, postpone the purchase of a big-deck amphibious ship by one year and postpone the planned purchase of a number of other vessels for several years.
– Eliminate two Army heavy brigades stationed in Europe and compensate by rotating U.S. based units into the region for training and exercises.
– Study the possibility of further reducing the size of U.S. nuclear arsenal.
– Begin a new round of talks on closing bases made unnecessary by the smaller force.
(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart and Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
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Standing on the Hoover Dam, you’re trying to encapsulate the majesty of the engineering feat before you. Turning the camera on its side, you try and get a perfect portrait shot, but find the vagaries of evolution mean your fingers won’t stretch to the buttons anymore. If you’ve ever experienced such horrors, Pentax has the solution with its new Optio VS20 digital compact camera. The 16-megapixel camera packs an accelerometer (like Samsung’s QF20) which will flip your image to the correct orientation and a second shutter release and zoom lever on the topmost side of the body for easier snapping. The company also thoughtfully included a second tripod mount, so there’s no futzing with your stand required. Less exceptional features include a 3-inch LCD, automatic picture modes including fish-eye that’ll appeal to the young skaters and hipsters you see littering the streets. It’ll capture 1280 x 720 movies with its independent video button (also recording in fish-eye) and variable aspect ratio. It’s arriving next month for $250, so if you want to become a superstar of the board, you’d better get practicing your Ollies.Continue reading Pentax Optio VS20: hold it any way you want, as long as you love it
Pentax Optio VS20: hold it any way you want, as long as you love it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Who knows why tech tinkerers do what they do. We’re just happy to see those idle hands try the untested. Like this latest Arduino hack from modder Michael of Nootropic Design, who’s seen fit to rig a 16 x 32 LED matrix up to an Android phone for use as a secondary display. The outputted video, downscaled via OpenCV software to an appropriate resolution and 12-bit color, is admittedly unimpressive, as it chugs along at a paltry four frames per second. But that’s not the point of this can-do experiment — it’s all about the possibilities, however blurry and pointless they may be (although, we’re sure Barbara Walters would beg to differ). Ready to see this modjob in motion? Then head on past the break for a brief video demo.
Continue reading Arduino hack gives a second screen to Android phones, isn’t very useful (video)
Arduino hack gives a second screen to Android phones, isn’t very useful (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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If your life is anything like ours, it’s in sore need of more pseudo-holographic helicopters. Fortunately, YouTube user programming4fun has come up with a solution, using Microsoft’s Kinect beta SDK and a Windows Phone handset. The system, pictured above, basically consists of a Kinect and a 3D engine; the former tracks the position of a viewer and automatically adjusts the image projected by the latter, creating the illusion of a 3D landscape. In this case, that landscape happened to feature a holographic helicopter, which could be controlled using a phone’s accelerometer and a Windows Phone 7 app (apparently called HoloController). Watch it in action, after the break.
Continue reading Kinect and Windows Phone combine to create holographic game engine (video)
Kinect and Windows Phone combine to create holographic game engine (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Jan 2012 13:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/25/kinect-and-windows-phone-combine-to-create-holographic-game-engi/
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U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with her staffer Ron Barber, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, left, tours the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center, one of her favorite charities, with Community Food Bank CEO Bill Carnegie Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. The tour is her last act as a congresswoman in Tucson before her resignation this week. (AP Photo/Matt York, Pool)
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) ? On a bittersweet day for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the outgoing congresswoman spent her final hours in Tucson as the city’s U.S. representative, finishing the meeting she started on the morning she was shot and bidding farewell to constituents who supported her through a long recovery.
It may not be the end, though. The woman whose improbable recovery captivated the nation promised, “I will return.”
Giffords spent time Monday at her office with other survivors of the shooting rampage that killed six people and injured 13. She hugged and talked with survivors, including Suzi Hileman, who was shot three times while trying to save her young friend and neighbor, 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. The little girl died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
“The last time I did this I had Christina’s hand,” Hileman said. “It was something that was hanging out there, and now it’s not.”
Others who met with Giffords included Pat Maisch, who was hailed as a hero for wrestling a gun magazine from the shooter that day, and Daniel Hernandez, Giffords’ intern at the time who helped save her life by trying to stop her bleeding until an ambulance arrived.
“It was very touching,” said Maisch, who was not hurt in the attack. “I thanked her for her service, wished her well, and she just looked beautiful.”
Giffords announced Sunday that she would resign from Congress this week to focus on her recovery. Maisch was sad to think that Giffords would no longer be her congresswoman.
“But I want her to do what’s best for her,” she said. “She’s got to take care of herself.”
However, an upbeat Giffords hinted that her departure from public life might be temporary. In a message sent on Twitter, she said: “I will return & we will work together for Arizona & this great country.”
In her last act in Tucson as a congresswoman, the Democrat visited one of her favorite charities, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.
The food bank established the Gabrielle Giffords Family Assistance Center with $215,000 it received in the wake of the shooting. Giffords’ husband and former astronaut Mark Kelly told people who wanted to help Giffords after the shooting that the best way to do so was to donate to one of her favorite charities.
The center has helped 900 families get on food stamps in the last year and offered guidance to needy families seeking assistance with housing, insurance, clothing and other basic needs.
“It’s a wonderful thing that she gets to come here and see the center we built,” said Bill Carnegie, the food bank’s CEO. “But it’s also her exit from Congress. I’m concerned about the future.”
Giffords’ aides had to yell at TV cameramen and reporters who surrounded the congresswoman as she arrived, telling them to back up. Giffords didn’t bat an eye and walked with confidence through the crowd and into the building, where she promptly hugged Carnegie and others.
When she saw the center that is named in her honor, she said “Wow” and “Awesome.”
When one woman told Giffords, “I love your new hairstyle,” she beamed and responded with “Thank you.”
Giffords did not address reporters at the center and planned to head to the airport right after her visit. She was expected in Washington on Tuesday for President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.
In her announcement Sunday, Giffords said that by stepping down, she was doing what is best for Arizona.
“I don’t remember much from that horrible day, but I will never forget the trust you placed in me to be your voice,” she said in a video posted online.
The video showed a close-up of Giffords gazing directly at the camera and speaking in a voice that was both firm and halting.
“I have more work to do on my recovery,” the congresswoman said at the end of the two-minute message, appearing to strain to communicate.
C.J. Karamargin, who was Giffords’ spokesman until recently, said he can only imagine what she is feeling as she steps down.
“But Gabby would never want to do a job unless she could give everything to it,” he said.
“The news of her stepping down was almost more emotional than this time last year because then, she had survived and had a positive prognosis. Now we’ve got this pause, this comma, in her career … and she won’t be back anytime soon.”
Giffords was shot in the head at point-blank range as she was meeting with constituents outside a grocery store. Her recovery progressed to the point that she was able to walk into the House chamber last August to cast a vote.
Giffords’ resignation set up a free-for-all in a competitive district.
She could have stayed in office for another year even without seeking re-election, but her decision to resign scrambles the political landscape.
Arizona must hold a special primary and general election to find someone to finish out her remaining months in office. That will probably happen in the spring or early summer. Then voters will elect someone in November for a full two-year term.
Giffords would have been heavily favored to win again.
She was elected to her third term just two months before she was shot, winning by only about 1 percent over a tea party Republican. But she gained immense public support during her recovery.
Among those mentioned as potential candidates were several Republican and Democratic state lawmakers and the name of Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, although he has publicly quashed such speculation.
A state Democratic party official who met with Giffords on Sunday also suggested that she could return to politics.
Jim Woodbrey, a senior vice chairman of the state party, said Giffords strongly implied at a meeting that she would seek office again someday. He said the decision to resign came after much thought.
“It was Gabby’s individual decision, and she was not in any condition to make that decision five months ago,” he said. “So I think waiting so that she could make an informed decision on her own was the right thing to do.”
___
Associated Press writers Bob Christie and Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and David Espo in Washington contributed to this story.
Associated Press
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COMMENTARY | The talk in the political arena is the Jan. 31 Florida primary, and the two-week period leading to the primary. Political pundits question whether Mitt Romney can hone his debate skills, whether Rick Santorum is stumping for a vice presidential bid, or whether Ron Paul is now a mere afterthought in the primary process. However, the main focus is the momentum Newt Gingrich gained as a result of his upset of the Republican establishment favorite Romney, in the South Carolina primary, and how the Republican establishment in Washington accepts it.
The Washington Republican establishment, who worked with Gingrich when he was speaker of the house in the mid-’90s, are his friends, but not his fans. Nevertheless, instead of trying to appease, Gingrich seems to confront them. A Jan. 23 Associated Press article quoted Newt Gingrich as saying, “I think you’re going to see the establishment go crazy in the next week or two.”
While Gingrich was Speaker of the House, his roughshod demeanor, power-hungry personality, and lack of ethics created waves, and, in disgrace, he resigned from the house in 1999. Those in today’s Republican establishment, who worked with him when he was Speaker of the House, see him as a divider, not a unifier.
But the older Republican electorate remembers his successes, such as when the Republicans took over the house in 1994, welfare reform and leading the drive to balance the budget, more than his failures.
Therein lies the dilemma. The Republican establishment does not want to back Gingrich, while, at this time anyway, the Republican electorate favors him. The rub is a 100 percent unified effort is necessary to defeat President Barrack Obama in the 2012 election. In spite of this, less than a year before the election, both Gingrich and the Republican establishment are throwing jabs at each other, while their electorate awaits a meeting of minds from their leadership.
It’s evident a compromise is necessary from both sides. It’s been 13 years since Gingrich resigned as house leader, and he admits his mistakes, both in D.C. and in his personal life. He says he asked God for forgiveness, and put that part of his personality make-up behind him. If God forgave Gingrich, shouldn’t the Republican establishment do the same?
On the other hand, though, if Gingrich came to God with an attitude of contrition, should he not approach the Republican establishment in the same manner? If he does, and the Republican establishment does, wouldn’t the electorate be appeased, and all three can concentrate on the similar mission of winning the election in November?
Source: Associated Press: Gingrich enjoying rise in fortunes, sasses ‘establishment’ backing Romney: foxnews.com
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SAN FRANCISCO ? A quarter-century after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first prescription drugs based on the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, additional medicines derived from or inspired by the cannabis plant itself could soon be making their way to pharmacy shelves, according to drug companies, small biotech firms and university scientists.
A British company, GW Pharma, is in advanced clinical trials for the world’s first pharmaceutical developed from raw marijuana instead of synthetic equivalents_ a mouth spray it hopes to market in the U.S. as a treatment for cancer pain. And it hopes to see FDA approval by the end of 2013.
Sativex contains marijuana’s two best known components ? delta 9-THC and cannabidiol ? and already has been approved in Canada, New Zealand and eight European countries for a different usage, relieving muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis.
FDA approval would represent an important milestone in the nation’s often uneasy relationship with marijuana, which 16 states and the District of Columbia already allow residents to use legally with doctors’ recommendations. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration categorizes pot as a dangerous drug with no medical value, but the availability of a chemically similar prescription drug could increase pressure on the federal government to revisit its position and encourage other drug companies to follow in GW Pharma’s footsteps.
“There is a real disconnect between what the public seems to be demanding and what the states have pushed for and what the market is providing,” said Aron Lichtman, a Virginia Commonwealth University pharmacology professor and president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society. “It seems to me a company with a great deal of vision would say, `If there is this demand and need, we could develop a drug that will help people and we will make a lot of money.’”
Possessing marijuana still is illegal in the United Kingdom, but about a decade ago GW Pharma’s founder, Dr. Geoffrey Guy, received permission to grow it to develop a prescription drug. Guy proposed the idea at a scientific conference that heard anecdotal evidence that pot provides relief to multiple sclerosis patients, and the British government welcomed it as a potential way “to draw a clear line between recreational and medicinal use,” company spokesman Mark Rogerson said.
In addition to exploring new applications for Sativex, the company is developing drugs with different cannabis formulations.
“We were the first ones to charge forward and a lot of people were watching to see what happened to us,” Rogerson said. “I think we are clearly past that stage.”
In 1985, the FDA approved two drug capsules containing synthetic THC, Marinol and Cesamet, to ease side-effects of chemotherapy in cancer patients. The agency eventually allowed Marinol to be prescribed to stimulate the appetites of AIDS patients. The drug’s patent expired last year, and other U.S. companies have been developing formulations that could be administered through dissolving pills, creams and skin patches and perhaps be used for other ailments.
Doctors and multiple sclerosis patients are cautiously optimistic about Sativex. The National Multiple Sclerosis Society has not endorsed marijuana use by patients, but the organization is sponsoring a study by a University of California, Davis neurologist to determine how smoking marijuana compares to Marinol in addressing painful muscle spasms.
“The cannabinoids and marijuana will, eventually, likely be part of the clinician’s armamentarium, if they are shown to be clinically beneficial,” said Timothy Coetzee, the society’s chief research officer. “The big unknown in my mind is whether they are clearly beneficial.”
Opponents and supporters of crude marijuana’s effectiveness generally agree that more research is needed. And marijuana advocates fear that the government will use any new prescription products to justify a continued prohibition on marijuana use. .
“To the extent that companies can produce effective medication that utilizes the components of the plant, that’s great. But that should not be the exclusive access for people who want to be able to use medical marijuana,” Americans for Safe Access spokesman Kris Hermes said. “That’s the race against time, in terms of how quickly can we put pressure on the federal government to recognize the plant has medical use versus the government coming out with the magic bullet pharmaceutical pill.”
Interest in new and better marijuana-based medicines has been building since the discovery in the late 1980s and 1990s that mammals have receptors in their central nervous systems, several organs and immune systems for the chemicals in botanical cannabis and that their bodies also produce natural cannabinoids that work on the same receptors.
One of the first drugs to build on those breakthroughs was an anti-obesity medication that blocked the same chemical receptors that trigger the munchies in pot smokers. Under the name Acomplia, it was approved throughout Europe and heralded as a possible new treatment for smoking cessation and metabolic disorders that can lead to heart attacks.
The FDA was reviewing its safety as a diet drug when follow-up studies showed that people taking the drug were at heightened risk of suicide and other psychiatric disorders. French manufacturer Sanofi-Aventis, pulled it from the market in late 2008.
Given that drug companies already were reluctant “to touch anything that is THC-like with a 10-foot- pole,” the setback had a chilling effect on cannabinoid drug development, according to Lichtman.
“Big companies like Merck and Pfizer were developing their own versions (of Acomplia), so all of those programs they spent millions and millions on just went away…” he said.
But scientists and drug companies that are exploring pot’s promise predict the path will ultimately be successful, if long and littered with setbacks.
One is Alexandros Makriyannis, director of the Center for Drug Discovery at Northeastern University and founder of a small Boston company that hopes to market synthetic pain products that are chemically unrelated to marijuana, but work similarly on the body or inhibit the cannabinoid receptors. He also has been working on a compound that functions like the failed Acomplia but without the depressive effects.
“I think within five to 10 years, we should get something,” Makriyannis said.
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