The team from Academia Sinica, the nation's top research institution, has recently identified a number of key factors that may help in preventing neurodegenerative diseases in the future, including patients who suffer from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Last year, "Godfather of Broadband" and Nobel Prize laureate Sir Charles Kao visited Taiwan. Kao has been suffering from Alzheimer's disease since 2004, and has speech difficulty.

While many theories exist to explain the cause of the disease, the condition is largely believed to be caused by protein abnormalities in the brain.

Researchers at the Academia Sinica's Institute of Physics have been attempting to use simple physics models to explain protein activity in the brain,

and recently discovered that the stronger the negative and positive electric charges on proteins are, and the higher the temperature, the faster protein aggregation occurs and the earlier neurodegenerative diseases develop.

According to Hu Chin-kun, this is extremely basic, but unprecedented, research. The team is hopeful that their discoveries will one day be able to suppress or slow the development of these conditions.

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