Experiencing Coaching for the First Time: First Coaching Sessions from the Executive Client’s Perspective

Background: Executive coaching has become a mainstay of leadership development practice worldwide. Some aspects of executive coaching such as return on investment are well studied, but the client experience of coaching is underexplored. This study aims to describe how clients perceive their first coaching experience and create a conceptual model of this experience to guide coaching practice. Methodology: 15 executives who had previously experienced their first coaching session took part in semi-structured interviews. The analysis of the interview protocols wasbased on Grounded Theory methodology. Results:Reports of client experiences were used to develop a conceptual Discovering, Agency, Roles, Expectations (DARE) model. The client experience of executive coaching is saturated with discoveries. Discovering of coaching, oneself and also a view of one’s potential from one’s own and third party perspectives are at the heart of the executive coaching experience. Perceptions of the experience are further influenced by client expectations, the conditions surrounding coaching and the different roles taken by coach and client. A sequence of agency emerged from the analysis. Conclusions: The thesis explores the implications of the emerging model of the first experience and how coaches can use this understanding of the coaching experience to enhance the client experience. Further research is needed into some aspects of the experience, such as the roles of coach and client and prevalence of discovering as a core experience in subsequent coaching sessions

The Genome of Mycobacterium Africanum West African 2 Reveals a Lineage-Specific Locus and Genome Erosion Common to the M. tuberculosis Complex

Mycobacterium africanum, a close relative of M. tuberculosis, is studied for the following reasons: M. africanum is commonly isolated from West African patients with tuberculosis yet has not spread beyond this region, it is more common in HIV infected patients, and it is less likely to lead to tuberculosis after one is exposed to an infectious case. Understanding this organism's unique biology gets a boost from the decoding of its genome, reported in this issue. For example, genome analysis reveals that M. africanum contains a region shared with “ancient” lineages in the M. tuberculosis complex and other mycobacterial species, which was lost independently from both M. tuberculosis and M. bovis. This region encodes a protein involved in transmembrane transport. Furthermore, M. africanum has lost genes, including a known virulence gene and genes for vitamin synthesis, in addition to an intact copy of a gene that may increase its susceptibility to antibiotics that are insufficiently active against M. tuberculosis. Finally, the genome sequence and analysis reported here will aid in the development of new diagnostics and vaccines against tuberculosis, which need to take into account the differences between M. africanum and other species in order to be effective worldwide

Comparative analysis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis pe and ppe genes reveals high sequence variation and an apparent absence of selective constraints.

Contains fulltext : 110619.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) genomes contain 2 large gene families termed pe and ppe. The function of pe/ppe proteins remains enigmatic but studies suggest that they are secreted or cell surface associated and are involved in bacterial virulence. Previous studies have also shown that some pe/ppe genes are polymorphic, a finding that suggests involvement in antigenic variation. Using comparative sequence analysis of 18 publicly available MTBC whole genome sequences, we have performed alignments of 33 pe (excluding pe_pgrs) and 66 ppe genes in order to detect the frequency and nature of genetic variation. This work has been supplemented by whole gene sequencing of 14 pe/ppe (including 5 pe_pgrs) genes in a cohort of 40 diverse and well defined clinical isolates covering all the main lineages of the M. tuberculosis phylogenetic tree. We show that nsSNP's in pe (excluding pgrs) and ppe genes are 3.0 and 3.3 times higher than in non-pe/ppe genes respectively and that numerous other mutation types are also present at a high frequency. It has previously been shown that non-pe/ppe M. tuberculosis genes display a remarkably low level of purifying selection. Here, we also show that compared to these genes those of the pe/ppe families show a further reduction of selection pressure that suggests neutral evolution. This is inconsistent with the positive selection pressure of "classical" antigenic variation. Finally, by analyzing such a large number of genes we were able to detect large differences in mutation type and frequency between both individual genes and gene sub-families. The high variation rates and absence of selective constraints provides valuable insights into potential pe/ppe function. Since pe/ppe proteins are highly antigenic and have been studied as potential vaccine components these results should also prove informative for aspects of M. tuberculosis vaccine design

Prognostic impact of TweakR expression on studied BC patients.

<p><b>A.</b> Overall survival according to TweakR score. <b>B.</b> Disease-free interval according to TweakR score. <b>C.</b> Metastasis-free interval according to TweakR score. Kaplan–Meier curves of tumors were determined according to TweakR expression lower (solid line) or higher (dashed line) than median expression of 30. High TweakR expression tends to be significantly associated with a poor overall survival (hazard ratio = 2.43, 95% CI: 0.96–6.13, p = 0.053, log-rank test).</p

Correlation between TweakR expression and biological and clinical characteristics of the 134 included breast cancer patients.

<p>Pathol. tumor size, pathological tumor size; the mitotic index (MI) was calculated as a percentage as follows: the number of dividing cells divided by the total number of cells present in ten cellular fields (x400).</p><p>Correlation between TweakR expression and biological and clinical characteristics of the 134 included breast cancer patients.</p

TweakR staining H-score distributions in the overall patient’s tumors (A), in patient’s tumors according to their breast cancer sub-groups (B) and in xenografts (C).

<p>H-score was calculated as <i>H-score = epithelial cell staining percentage×staining intensity</i>.</p

Predictive markers of response to PDL192.

<p><b>A.</b> Genes that expression significantly influenced response to PDL192 and <i>TWEAKR/TNFRSF12A.</i>hs gene expression in responding and no responding models. (R: Responding; NR: non responding) <b>B.</b> Hierarchical clustering of the 8 best predictive genes.</p