University of North Carolina at Charlotte

About: University of North Carolina at Charlotte is a education organization based out in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 8772 authors who have published 22239 publications receiving 562529 citations. The organization is also known as: UNC Charlotte & UNCC.

Connecting the Dots in Public Management: Political Environment, Organizational Goal Ambiguity, and the Public Manager's Role Ambiguity

Abstract: This article is a systematic effort to study a key theoretical question from the vantage point of public sector organizational behavior. Most political science models, with a primary interest in democratic control of bureaucracy, study the political influence on the bureaucracy from an agency theory perspective. Organization behavior literature, on the other hand, is focused largely on the study of individual-level phenomena in private organizations and does not incorporate political context as part of explanatory models. This article proposes a middle-range theory to "connect the dots," beginning with disparate sources in the polity influencing organizational goal ambiguity, which in turn is expected to increase managerial role ambiguity. An empirical test, using data collected from a national survey of managers working in state human service agencies, supports this theoretical model. We find that certain types of political influence have an impact on organizational goal ambiguity, which in turn has a direct effect in increasing role ambiguity and also an indirect effect in increasing role ambiguity through organizational structure.

A Survey of Social-Based Routing in Delay Tolerant Networks: Positive and Negative Social Effects

Abstract: Delay tolerant networks (DTNs) may lack continuous network connectivity. Routing in DTNs is thus challenging since it must handle network partitioning, long delays, and dynamic topology in such networks. In recent years, social-based approaches, which attempt to exploit social behaviors of DTN nodes to make better routing decision, have drawn tremendous interests in DTN routing design. In this article, we summarize the social properties in DTNs, and provide a survey of recent social-based DTN routing approaches. To improve routing performance, these methods either take advantages of positive social characteristics such as community and friendship to assist packet forwarding or consider negative social characteristics such as selfishness. We conclude by discussing some open issues and challenges in social-based approaches regarding the design of DTN routing protocols.

Microbial genomic analysis reveals the essential role of inflammation in bacteria-induced colorectal cancer

Abstract: Enterobacteria, especially Escherichia coli, are abundant in patients with inflammatory bowel disease or colorectal cancer (CRC). However, it is unclear whether cancer is promoted by inflammation-induced expansion of E. coli and/or changes in expression of specific microbial genes. Here we use longitudinal (2, 12 and 20 weeks) 16S rRNA sequencing of luminal microbiota from ex-germ-free mice to show that inflamed Il10(-/-) mice maintain a higher abundance of Enterobacteriaceae than healthy wild-type mice. Experiments with mono-colonized Il10(-/-) mice reveal that host inflammation is necessary for E. coli cancer-promoting activity. RNA-sequence analysis indicates significant changes in E. coli gene catalogue in Il10(-/-) mice, with changes mostly driven by adaptation to the intestinal environment. Expression of specific genes present in the tumour-promoting E. coli pks island are modulated by inflammation/CRC development. Thus, progression of inflammation in Il10(-/-) mice supports Enterobacteriaceae and alters a small subset of microbial genes important for tumour development.