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OAXACA Cheap Nike React Element 87 Youth , Mexico, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- Mexico's export sector is laboring under an atmosphere of "uncertainty" now that the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is under scrutiny and revision, a business leader said on Thursday.


Valentin Diez, President of the Mexican Business Council for Foreign Trade, Investment and Technology (COMCE), said renegotiating the two-decade trade deal has thrown the future of Mexico's trade ties with the United States and Canada, its NAFTA partners, into doubt.


Diez, who is also president of the advisory board of Mexican beer giant Grupo Modelo, addressed the opening of the 24th Mexican Foreign Trade Congress, being held in the southern capital city of Oaxaca through Friday.


Despite the uncertainties introduced by the new U.S. administration and its push to amend the agreement, "Mexico has maintained great dynamism in its exports. However, the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement has introduced a certain uncertainty into our ties with our main NAFTA partners," said Diez.


Still, Diez said he doubted U.S. President Donald Trump will "unilaterally withdraw from the trade agreement."


The U.S. market accounts for some 80 percent of Mexico's exports, a reality that underscores the importance NAFTA holds for the Latin American nation.


Since Trump's campaign to negotiate a better deal for U.S. industry, Mexico has looked to diversify its export markets.


"One of the challenges the export sector faces is that of venturing into other countries and economic and geographic regions," said Diez.


Participants at the congress plan to take a detailed look at NAFTA and Mexico's trade ties with other parts, such as the European Union and the rest of Latin America, and also discuss e-commerce, alternative energies and other matters.


Diez said he also hoped to see proposals to boost Mexico's "competitiveness, our export capacity and consolidation as a very important player in international trade."


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SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 7 (Xinhua) -- A new study has identified a protein that links alcohol consumption with structural changes in one of the "reward centers" in the mouse brain.


Published online Thursday in Neuron, by researchers at University of California, San Francisco, or UCSF, casts new light on the molecular domino effect by which alcohol triggers long-lasting changes in brain cells that drive heavy drinking.


Alcohol remains a mysterious drug on a scientific level. Researchers still don't know how ethanol - a tiny molecule that, unlike all other drugs of abuse, does not have a specific site of action - can alter brain function to promote compulsive, uncontrolled consumption and alcohol-seeking despite negative consequences.


Previous work in rodents by the lab of Dorit Ron, professor in UCSF's Department of Neurology and the new study's senior author, and others has suggested that a protein by the name of mTORC1 may be a key mediator of addiction to multiple drugs of abuse, including cocaine, morphine and alcohol. Her lab has shown that excessive drinking boosts mTORC1 activity in the nucleus accumbens, an important part of the brain's reward circuitry, and that this increased mTORC1 activity is associated with alcohol-seeking.


These findings suggested that mTORC1, the normal function of which is to promote the synthesis of new proteins, might trigger structural changes in the nucleus accumbens that reinforce positive associations with alcohol, contributing to the cycle of excess drinking.


In the new study, postdoctoral associate Sophie Laguesse, and her colleagues in the Ron lab used a technique called RNAseq to hunt new proteins that might be linked to mTORC1 activity in the mouse brain in response to alcohol. Of the 12 proteins they found, the researchers focused on one called prosapip1, and found that this protein changes the structure and activity of neurons in the nucleus accumbens after mice drank alcohol for a long time.


When the authors genetically blocked the production of prosapip1, these alcohol-dependent changes were significantly reduced; and when offered a choice between alcohol and water, mice in which prosapip1 was blocked reduced their preference for alcohol. In addition, the mice's consumption of sugar water, normally very rewarding, was not affected by blocking the protein.


"We have identified a new protein that plays a crucial role in changing the landscape of neurons in the nucleus accumbens, which then leads to escalation of problem drinking," Ron was quoted as saying in a news release from UCSF. "These findings open up research into the protein' s role in neural plasticity, and also into how alcohol and other drugs of abuse alter our brains."


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