The unit group of a partial Burnside ring relative to the Young subgroups of the symmetric group S-n on n letters is included in the image by the tom Dieck homomorphism. As a consequence of this fact, the alternating character nu(n) of S-n is expressed explicitly as a Z-linear combinations of permutation characters associated with finite left S-n-sets S-n/Y for the Young subgroups Y. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.