Actors can skip the gym with MovieReshape

Stars whose six-packs refuse to show up in time for the first day of shooting need worry no more thanks to MovieReshape, a new technology that allows filmmakers to firm flab and boost buttocks without the tedium of frame-by-frame touchups.

Christian Theobalt of the Max Planck Institute for Informatics has created software that maps a person’s silhouette onto a 3-D model that can then be manipulated by editors.

Since the technology only works with “a clear, unobstructed background,” though, it’s far more likely to be used in commercials than feature-length films for the time being.

Image of Lava Spewing from Iceland's Hvolsvllur Volcanic vent

Lava spews out of a mountain in Hvolsvllur in the region of the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland

Hundreds of Insect Fossils found in Amber

Ötzi the iceman: Leaves a Wealth of Knowledge

Ötzi is a mummified human discovered in 1991 in the Schnalstal glacier in the Alps, on the border between Austria and Italy. He died around 3300 BC.

The mummy offers a wealth of information about the humans living in Europe at the time. Ötzi was named after the Ötztal region where he was found.

The new EURAC Iceman photoscan website now gives all web users access to images of the body gathered by researchers. The site has a dynamic online-map-style interface to let people zoom into photographs that capture Ötzi from all angles and show details as small as 1 millimetre.

(Image: © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology / Eurac / Marco Samadelli / Gregor Staschitz)