Scientists and journalists from some 50 nations attended the 2012 AAAS Annual Meeting, so it's no surprise that there was a wide variety of news stories filed from Vancouver:

Climate change and the resulting stresses to food and water supplies around the planet were major topics at the 2012 meeting. There were stories about threatening sea level rise along the western coasts of North America; the Wall Street Journal's look at the deadly impacts of wildfire smoke; and Chinese news agency Xhinhua's coverage of international food security concerns.

A declaration of rights for whales and dolphins made many headlines with the idea that the cetaceans should be considered "non-human persons." It's a move that could make whaling and waterpark dolphin shows obsolete, wrote Fiona Macrae of the U.K. Daily Mail. The Canadian National Post even asked the head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vancouver what he thought about the declaration.

Canadian journalists also wrote about research on new ways of making radioactive isotopes needed for modern medicine. The CBC and The Vancouver Sun, among others, discussed how critical shortages of the medicine might be addressed without using aging nuclear reactors.

In less healthy news, it may be that everything you know about dieting is wrong, according to the AFP's Kerry Sheridan. Stories from the widely-covered symposium at the Annual Meeting on a new weight loss calculator appeared in The Telegraph and The Globe and Mail, among other outlets.

Other health stories from Vancouver included The Irish Times' report on attempts to track the causes of autism, and Sandi Doughton's Seattle Times story on a promising new vaccine for the cruise ship scourge of norovirus.

Other journalists found the smaller stories at AAAS: the German newspaper Arzte Zeitung covered the meeting's session on the human and environmental aftermath of Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster; LiveScience reported on the consequences of the United States' growing prison population; and Science News' Rachel Ehrenberg showed how scientists are probing the "Dark Web" for information about terrorist groups.

Physics had its day in Vancouver too, with an ABC Australia story on how quantum computing will crack the best cryptography, and MSNBC.com's report on the latest developments in particle physics.

Of course, just a few days later scientists were discussing how one of those developments--a faster than light neutrino--was probably just a glitch. Maybe everyone can talk about that next year in Boston?