Filmmakers know personality disorders make for compelling viewing.

Think of attention-seeking Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind" (1939). Or the manipulation and callous disregard for others in "Silence of the Lambs" (1991), "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999) and "Chopper" (2000). Then there are the fears of abandonment and emotional instability in "Fatal Attraction" (1987) and "Girl, Interrupted" (1999).

Cinema is less adept, however, at showing the ordinary joys, heartache and sometimes suicidal despair of the friends, workers or relatives we might know with personality disorders.

Who volunteers to have sex in a laboratory?

I was struck by this question when reading about an experimental study of ideal sexual positions for men with back pain.

For the purpose of the research, couples were filmed using motion capture and infra-red technology while they had sex.

The researchers were in a separate booth where they could hear, but not see, the participants. Electrodes were used to record muscle activity in certain parts of the body, to get an idea of force.

When checking your email over a secure connection, or making a purchase from an online retailer, have you ever wondered how your private information or credit card data is kept secure?

Our information is kept away from prying eyes thanks to cryptographic algorithms, which scramble the message so no-one else can read it but its intended recipient. But what are these algorithms, how did they come to be widely used, and how secure really are they?

Narcissistic children feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges and crave admiration from others.

When they don’t get the admiration they want, they may lash out aggressively.

Why do some children become narcissistic, whereas others develop more modest views of themselves? We have undertaken research into this question and we found socialization plays a significant role.

Consumer driven food trends are nothing new.

“Organics”, gluten-free, and more recently buying “local” have all captured consumers, encouraging supermarkets around the globe and in Australia to respond.

But the next emerging European food trend that may have the biggest impact on what we buy each week is “ugly food”.

It is often claimed that the Ancient Greeks were the first to identify objects that have no size, yet are able to build up the world around us through their interactions.

And as we are able to observe the world in tinier and tinier detail through microscopes of increasing power, it is natural to wonder what these objects are made of.

We believe we have found some of these objects: subatomic particles, or fundamental particles, which having no size can have no substructure. We are now seeking to explain the properties of these particles and working to show how these can be used to explain the contents of the universe.