Upper urinary tract disease: what we know today and unmet needs

PURPOSE: Upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) is a rare and poorly investigated disease. Intense collaborative efforts have increased our knowledge and improved the management of the disease. The objective of this review was to discuss recent advances and unmet needs in UTUC. METHODS: A non-systematic Medline/PubMed literature search was performed on UTUC using the terms "upper tract urothelial carcinoma" with different combinations of keywords. Original articles, reviews and editorials in English language were selected based on their clinical relevance. RESULTS: UTUC is a disease with specific epidemiologic and risk factors different to urothelial carcinoma of the bladder (UCB). Similarly to UCB, smoking increases the risk of UTUC and worsens its prognosis, whereas aristolochic acid (AA) exposure and mismatch repair genes abnormality are UTUC specific risk factors. A growing understanding of biological pathways involved in the tumorigenesis of UTUC has led to the identification of promising prognostic/predictive biomarkers. Risk stratification of UTUC is difficult due to limitations in staging and grading. Modern imaging and endoscopy have improved clinical decision-making, and allowed kidney-sparing management and surveillance in favorable-risk tumors. In high-risk tumors, radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) remains the standard. Complete removal of the intramural ureter is necessary with inferiority of endoscopic management. Post-RNU intravesical instillation has been shown to decrease bladder cancer recurrence rates. While the role of neoadjuvant cisplatin based combination chemotherapy and lymphadenectomy are not clearly established, the body of evidence suggests a survival benefit to these. There is currently no evidence for adjuvant chemotherapy (AC) in UTUC. CONCLUSIONS: Despite growing interest and understanding of UTUC, its management remains challenging, requiring further high quality multicenter collaborations. Accurate risk estimation is necessary to avoid unnecessary RNUs while advances in technology are still required for optimal kidney-sparing approaches

Développement d’outils d’optimisation pour la planification à moyen et long terme de la production hydroélectrique

RÉSUMÉ: La planification de la production vise à définir l’utilisation des ressources d’un parc hydroélectrique pour répondre à la demande électrique et maximiser les revenus tirés de l’électricité produite, tout en respectant les contraintes du système et en assurant la pérennité des installations. À moyen et long terme, l’horizon étudié s’étend typiquement sur plusieurs années avec un pas de temps hebdomadaire ou mensuel pour les étapes de décision. La gestion des réservoirs du parc doit se faire en considérant l’incertitude des apports en eau sur l’horizon de planification. La prise de décision à long terme est encore plus importante lorsque de grands réservoirs de capacité multiannuelle sont présents dans le parc de production comme au Québec. Les réservoirs multiannuels peuvent déplacer l’énergie stockée sur plusieurs années, ce qui en fait un moyen efficace de protection contre la grande variabilité hydrologique généralement présente à long terme. Un compromis doit être trouvé entre conserver un stock de sécurité suffisant pour les années futures et saisir les opportunités présentes à travers la production et la vente de l’énergie potentielle en stock. À cet équilibre difficile à trouver viennent s’ajouter la grande taille du système et les relations non linéaires et non convexes entre le débit soutiré, la hauteur de chute et la production hydroélectrique. Planifier la production à long terme se formule comme un problème multi-étapes stochastique de prise de décision qui est souvent résolu par la programmation dynamique stochastique (SDP) ou la programmation dynamique stochastique duale (SDDP), une variante de la SDP non affectée par la « malédiction de la dimension » du système. L’incertitude sur les apports est représentée par un modèle hydrologique périodique autorégressif (PAR) pour la méthode SDDP et un processus markovien dans le cadre de la SDP. Les cadres périodique autorégressif et markovien standard présentent des limitations à la structure de corrélation et aux statistiques annuelles et interannuelles pouvant être considérées. Le but de cette thèse est d’améliorer les méthodes d’optimisation sous incertitude afin de tenir compte de l’information statistique pertinente pour la planification long terme d’un complexe hydroélectrique. Trois activités entourent cet objectif principal. La première activité consiste à la mise en place d’un outil d’optimisation stochastique basé sur la SDDP dans l’environnement industriel d’Hydro-Québec Production (HQP). L’histoire de la programmation stochastique à HQP est longue et riche de modèles performants pour la gestion des opérations. Malheureusement, les divergences avec les caractéristiques officielles des installations n’ont pas favorisé la pérennité de ces modèles. Pour cette raison, un intérêt particulier a été apporté à l’adéquation du modèle avec l’environnement utilisateur et à la flexibilité de l’outil. Ces caractéristiques ont permis de doter les gestionnaires de rivière, les gestionnaires moyen terme et long terme d’un outil efficace d’aide à la décision dans la gestion du parc de production d’HQP. La deuxième activité utilise l’outil d’optimisation stochastique développé et étend le modèle PAR qui y est utilisé à un modèle périodique autorégressif à moyenne mobile (PARMA). Les modèles PARMA sont connus pour avoir une structure de corrélation plus forte que les modèles PAR. Les modèles PARMA testés sur le système hydrique Manicouagan ont révélé une meilleure représentation des autocorrélations d’ordre 2 et 3, ainsi que de la moyenne annuelle des apports par rapport aux modèles PAR de même ordre autorégressif. Les politiques de gestion obtenues par la méthode SDDP avec les modèles PARMA induisent une plus grande valeur marginale de l’eau stockée dans le réservoir multiannuel du système. Les décisions prises ont donc tendance à conserver plus d’eau en stock, ce qui entraîne une amplitude des déversements extrêmes plus forte contrebalancée par une meilleure protection du système contre les délestages. Globalement, le revenu moyen et l’efficacité du système se retrouvent améliorés, ce qui indique un meilleur compromis des modèles PARMA par rapport aux PAR. La troisième activité s’intéresse à une politique de gestion du stock énergétique d’Hydro- Québec Production sur plusieurs années qui intègre la représentation des statistiques annuelles et interannuelles d’un modèle Shifting Level (SL). Le parc de production est agrégé en réservoirs énergétiques équivalents et le SL est utilisé pour représenter la dynamique annuelle et interannuelle des apports, couplé à une méthode de désagrégation pour capturer l’information au niveau intra-annuel. La désagrégation temporelle n’est pas compatible avec le cadre markovien standard ce qui empêche l’utilisation directe de la SDP. Une méthode hybride est désignée dans laquelle les scénarios générés à partir du SL désagrégé permettent d’améliorer une politique initiale obtenue par la SDP où la variable hydrologique est l’apport précédent. La performance de la politique améliorée est comparée à la SDP qui utilise un modèle de Markov à états cachés autorégressif (HMM-AR) comme approximation markovienne du processus SL désagrégé. Le revenu moyen obtenu par la méthode hybride est supérieur à la SDP avec HMM-AR. Cet avantage est associé à un meilleur compromis entre un stock de sécurité élevé pour diminuer le risque de délestage et un volume de ventes élevé permettant de rentabiliser l’énergie stockée en évitant de la perdre par déversement.----------ABSTRACT: Hydropower production scheduling aims at defining the system’s use of resources to satisfy the electrical load and maximize the income from electricity production while respecting the constraints of the system and ensuring the sustainability of the installations. In the medium term and long term scheduling, the horizon typically spans over several years with a weekly or monthly time step for the decision stages. The management of the reservoirs in the system must consider the uncertainty of inflows over the planning horizon. Long-term decision-making is even more critical when large reservoirs with multi-year capacity are present as in Québec’s production system. Multi-year reservoirs can move stored energy over several years, making them an adequate protection tool against the huge hydrological variability generally present in the long term. Therefore, a trade-off must be found between ensuring sufficient safety storage for future years and seizing the current opportunities through the production and sale of the stock’s energy. In addition to this difficult balance, the large size of the system and the non-linear, non-convex relationships between discharges, head, and hydroelectric production make the problem even harder to solve. Long-term production planning is usually framed as a multistage stochastic decision-making problem. This problem is often solved by Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP) or Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming (SDDP), a variant of SDP unaffected by the “curse of the dimensionality”. The uncertainty on the inflows is represented by a periodic autoregressive model (PAR) for the SDDP method and a Markovian process within the SDP framework. Periodic autoregressive and the standard markovian models provide impressive fitting capabilities of the actual inflow process. However, some limitations may be present regarding the correlation structure and the annual and interannual statistics. This thesis aims to improve the stochastic optimization methods to take into account the relevant statistical information for the long-term planning of a hydroelectric complex. This primary goal is organized around three activities. The first activity consists of building a stochastic optimization tool based on SDDP in the industrial environment of Hydro-Québec Production (HQP). The history of stochastic programming at HQP is long and rich in robust models for the stochastic management of operations. Unfortunately, differences with the installations’ official characteristics did not favor the durability and the evolution of these models. Thus, a particular interest has been brought to the adequation of the model with the user environment and the flexibility of the tool. These characteristics have made it possible to provide river managers, medium-term, and long-term operators with a useful decision-support tool in managing the HQP production system. The second activity uses the developed stochastic optimization tool and extends the PAR model to a periodic autoregressive moving average model (PARMA). PARMA models are known to have a stronger correlation structure than PAR models. The PARMA models tested on the Manicouagan hydropower system better capture the autocorrelations of the order 2 and 3, as well as the annual average of the inflows compared to the PAR models of the same autoregressive order. The management policies obtained by the SDDP method with the PARMA models induce a higher marginal value of the water stored in the multi-year reservoir. Therefore, the decisions tend to keep more water in the reservoir, which leads to a greater amplitude of extreme spills balanced by better protection of the system against load deficits. Overall, the average income and the system’s efficiency are improved, which indicates a better compromise of the PARMA models compared to the PAR. The third activity is concerned with a policy for managing Hydro-Québec Production’s energy storage over several years, integrating the representation of annual and inter-annual statistics of a Shifting Level (SL) model. The production system is aggregated into equivalent energy reservoirs. The SL is used to represent the annual and interannual energy inflow dynamics, coupled with a disaggregation method to capture information at the intra-annual level. The temporal disaggregation is not compatible with the standard Markovian framework, which prevents SDP direct use. A hybrid method is designed to compute the operations policy. The hybrid method improves with the disaggregated SL scenarios, an initial policy obtained by the SDP, where the hydrological variable is the previous inflow. The improved policy’s performance is compared to an SDP method that uses an autoregressive hidden state Markov model (HMM-AR) as the Markovian approximation of the disaggregated SL process. The average income obtained by the hybrid method is higher than the SDP with HMM-AR. This advantage is associated with a better trade-off between high safety storage to reduce the risk of energy deficits and a high sales volume to profit on the energy stored by avoiding spillage losses

The Maxwell-Boltzmann-Euler System with a Massive Scalar Field in All Bianchi Spacetimes

We prove the existence and uniqueness of regular solution to the coupled Maxwell-Boltzmann-Euler system, which governs the collisional evolution of a kind of fast moving, massive, and charged particles, globally in time, in a Bianchi of types I to VIII spacetimes. We clearly define function spaces, and we establish all the essential energy inequalities leading to the global existence theorem

Replicability of a Millimeter-Wave Microstrip Bandpass Filter using Parallel Coupled Lines

Replicability of filters is critical especially at millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequencies, as a manufacturing error of a few tens of microns can significantly shift the frequency response in this range and lumped elements are not available at these frequencies. In this paper, seven replicas of a mm-wave coupled-line 3 rd order bandpass filter (BPF) are fabricated and measured under the same test conditions. The filters are designed on a single lot 10 mil-thick Rogers RO4350B substrate. The smallest spacing is 109 μm and the smallest line width is 330 μm. Over seven replicas, the passband is from 34.8±0.2 to 38.1±0.1 GHz; the insertion loss is 3.44±0.32 dB; the typical return loss is 10.18±2.43 dB. The measurement results are in accordance with the EM simulation results. They show that the reflection parameters are relatively sensitive to manufacturing tolerances and connector realization, while the transmission parameters are robust to fabrication variations. This demonstrates a satisfactory manufacturing replicability of microstrip BPF in the Ka-band (26.5-40 GHz), in the scope of radar system design.The authors thank EU Horizon 2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie ITN CELTA project (grant agreement no. 675683) for partial financial support, RAMMS project and DLR MIMIRAWE project funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (grant number: 50RA1326) for partial financial support

Promising role of preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio in patients treated with radical nephroureterectomy.

Several retrospective studies with small cohorts reported neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) as a prognostic marker in upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) following radical nephroureterectomy (RNU). We aimed at validating the predictive and prognostic role of NLR in a large multi-institutional cohort. Preoperative NLR was assessed in a multi-institutional cohort of 2477 patients with UTUC treated with RNU. Altered NLR was defined by a ratio >2.7. Logistic regression analyses were performed to assess the association between NLR and lymph node metastasis, muscle-invasive and non-organ-confined disease. The association of altered NLR with recurrence-free survival (RFS) and cancer-specific survival (CSS) was evaluated using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Altered NLR was observed in 1428 (62.8 %) patients and associated with more advanced pathological tumor stage, lymph node metastasis, lymphovascular invasion, tumor necrosis and sessile tumor architecture. In a preoperative model that included age, gender, tumor location and architecture, NLR was an independent predictive factor for the presence of lymph node metastasis, muscle-invasive and non-organ-confined disease (p < 0.001). Within a median follow-up of 40 months (IQR 20-76 months), 548 (24.1 %) patients experienced disease recurrence and 453 patients (19.9 %) died from their cancer. Compared to patients with normal NLR, those with altered NLR had worse RFS (0.003) and CSS (p = 0.002). In multivariable analyses that adjusted for the effects of standard clinicopathologic features, altered NLR did not retain an independent value. In the subgroup of patients treated with lymphadenectomy in addition to RNU, NLR was independently associated with CSS (p = 0.03). In UTUC, preoperative NLR is associated with adverse clinicopathologic features and independently predicts features of biologically and clinically aggressive UTUC such as lymph node metastasis, muscle-invasive or non-organ-confined status. NLR may help better risk stratify patients with regard to lymphadenectomy and conservative therapy

Exploring Nurses' Experiences of Providing Palliative Care : A Literature Review

This study intends to explore the experiences of nurses’ who work in the field of palliative care. The purpose of the study was to examine what kind of emotions and thoughts nurses’ experience when facing a common issue in palliative care, which is patients’ mortality and death. The aim of this study was to use literature sources and previously done researches to collect and summarize nurses’ experiences about providing palliative care. Exploring those experiences and finding out what coping mechanisms nurses use in the face of death can be useful for nursing students and nurses who are likely to experience the death of their patient during their professional life.Tämän opinnäytetyön tarkoituksena oli selvittää millaisia kokemuksia ja ajatuksia sairaanhoitajilla on palliatiivisesta hoitotyöstä ja siihen usein liittyvästä potilaan kuoleman kohtaamisesta. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli aiemmin toteutettujen tutkimusten pohjalta tehdä tiivistelmä yleisimmistä sairaanhoitajien kokemuksista ja potilaan kuoleman herättämistä tunteista palliatiivisen hoidon alalla. Tarkoituksena oli myös saada selville sairaanhoitajien käyttämiä selviytymiskeinoja kuolevan potilaan kohtaamiseen ja kuoleman käsittelyyn liittyen, siinä toivossa että tästä olisi hyötyä sairaanhoidon opiskelijoille tai jo valmistuneille sairaanhoitajille, jotka kohtaavat kuolemaa työssään

Group music therapy with adolescent asylum seekers at a temporary reception center : a phenomenological study

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to; (1) explore the experience of teenage asylum-seekers as they went through 20 sessions of group music therapy while waiting for the resolution of the asylum claims at the temporary reception center for refugees and (2) discover the type of challenges that a therapist can face when working with teenagers in a situation of crisis and what can be the possible steps taken in order to overcome those challenges. By adopting a phenomenological approach, the goal was that in exploring the essence of the participants’ experience, the findings would show a clearer understanding of how music therapists, social workers or anyone working in connection with adolescent asylum-seekers could contribute in improving the condition of children refugees in situations of crisis. The research questions that guided this inquiry where the as follows: what is the nature of the experience of adolescence asylum-seekers as they go to group music therapy in a reception center? And what kind of challenges can therapists expect to face when working under those conditions? The research findings showed that our teenage participants experienced (1) a sense of joy and improved mood, (2) a connection to their country in moments of nostalgia, (3) increased confidence and overcoming sense of shyness, (4) a sense of developing personal identity through music, (5) a sense of awareness into how music can affect them, and gratitude for that they saw an opportunity to take part in group music therapy. The study also uncovered that enormous challenges can arise for any therapist working with adolescents of foreign background mostly due to cultural and linguistic differences, post-migration related issues, and equally the need to preserve anonymity in the case of an ongoing asylum. It was also found that while those challenges can be overcome by the therapist adopting the right approach and right attitude, the level of challenge can be almost overwhelming, making such projects difficult to undertake without sufficient support

Millimetre-wave MIMO FMCW radar architecture towards highly integrated front-ends for high-resolution imaging applications

High-resolution, compactness, scalability, efficiency – these are the critical requirements which imaging radar systems have to fulfil in applications such as environmental monitoring, cloud mapping, body sensing or autonomous driving. This thesis presents a modular millimetre-wave frequency modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar front-end solution intended for such applications. High-resolution is achieved by enlarging the operating frequency band of the radar system. This can be realized at millimetre-wave frequencies due to the large spectrum availability. Furthermore, the size of components decreasing with increasing frequency makes millimetre-wave systems a good candidate for compactness. However, the full integration of radar front-ends is a challenge at millimetre-wave frequencies due to poor signal integrity and spectral purity, which are essential for imaging applications. The proposed radar uses an alternative technique and tackles this limitation by featuring highly-integrable architectures, specifically the Hartley architecture for signal conversion and enhanced push-pull amplifier for harmonic suppression. The resolution of imaging radars can be further improved by increasing the number of transmitters and receivers. This has spurred the investigation of spectrum, time and energy-efficient multiplexing techniques for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar systems. The FMCW radar architecture proposed in this thesis is based on code-division technique using intra-pulse, also called intra-chirp modulation. This advanced scalable and non-complex solution, made possible by the latest achievements on direct digital synthesis for signal generation, guarantees signal integrity and compact size implementation. The proposed architecture is investigated by a thorough system analysis. A transmitter module and a receiver module for a 35 GHz imaging radar prototype are designed, fabricated and fully characterized to validate the feasibility of our novel approach for high-resolution highly-integrated MIMO front-ends.Das Radar ist die einzige bildgebende Technologie, die unabhängig von der Umgebung und den Wetterbedingungen eingesetzt werden kann, was sie zu einer äußerst zuverlässigen Lösung für hochauflösende Bildgebungsanwendungen macht. Dennoch müssen bildgebende Radarsysteme in Anwendungen wie Umweltüberwachung, Wolkenkartierung, Körpererfassung oder autonomes Fahren kritische Anforderungen erfüllen: hohe Auflösung, Kompaktheit, Skalierbarkeit und Effizienz. In dieser Arbeit wird eine modulare, moduliertes-Dauerstrichradar-Front-End-Lösung (FMCW) für solche Anwendungen vorgestellt. Die hohe Auflösung wird durch die Vergrößerung des Betriebsfrequenzbandes des Radarsystems erreicht. Dies kann bei Millimeterwellenfrequenzen aufgrund des großen verfügbaren Spektrums realisiert werden. Da die Größe der Komponenten mit zunehmender Frequenz abnimmt, sind Millimeterwellensysteme zudem ein guter Kandidat für Kompaktheit. Allerdings ist die vollständige Integration von Radar-Front-Ends bei Millimeterwellenfrequenzen aufgrund der schlechten Signalintegrität und spektrale Reinheit, die für bildgebende Anwendungen unerlässlich sind, eine Herausforderung. Das vorgeschlagene Radar verwendet eine alternative Technik und geht diese Einschränkung durch hochintegrierbare Architekturen an, insbesondere die Hartley-Architektur für die Signalumwandlung und den verbesserten Gegentaktverstärker für die Oberwellenunterdrückung. Die Auflösung abbildender Radargeräte kann durch die Erhöhung der Anzahl von Sendern und Empfängern weiter verbessert werden. Dies hat die Untersuchung von frequenz-, zeit- und energieeffizienten Multiplexing-Techniken für MIMO-Radarsysteme (Multi-Input-Multi-Output) vorangetrieben. Die in dieser Arbeit vorgeschlagene FMCW-Radararchitektur basiert auf der Code-Division-Technik (CDMA) mit Intra-Puls-Modulation. Diese fortschrittliche, skalierbare und nicht komplexe Lösung, die durch die neuesten Errungenschaften der direkten digitalen Synthese (DDS) zur Signalerzeugung ermöglicht wird, garantiert Signalintegrität und eine kompakte Implementierung. Die vorgeschlagene Architektur wird durch eine gründliche Systemanalyse untersucht. Ein Sender- und ein Empfängermodul für einen 35-GHz-Prototyp eines abbildenden Radars wurden entworfen, hergestellt und vollständig charakterisiert, um die Machbarkeit unseres neuen Ansatzes für hochauflösende, hochintegrierte MIMO-Front-Ends zu validieren. Dieser Demonstrator dient als Prototyp für eine zukünftige Single-Chip-Implementierung im W-Band. Unseres Wissens nach ist diese Forschungsarbeit die einzige, die sich mit einem CDMA-basierten MIMO-FMCW-Radar mit Intrapulsmodulation im Millimeterwellenbereich befasst und dessen Theorie vollständig entwickelt. Darüber hinaus schlagen wir eine Lösung für hochintegrierte Front-Ends vor, die dennoch eine saubere spektrale Emission und eine zuverlässige Entfernungsmessung gewährleistet. Signalmodell Betrachten wir ein N×M MIMO-Radar mit N Sendern (Tx) und M Empfängern (Rx), einem m-PSK-Modulationsverfahren mit m = 2n und einer Familie von quasi-orthogonalen Codes (ci ϵ [1,N]) der Länge Nc. Das Sendesignal an Tx i ist ein mit einem Code ci phasenmoduliertes Chirp. Das empfangene Signal an Rx j ist die Summe der phasenmodulierten Chirps, die von allen Tx i gesendet werden und um die Laufzeit τij verzögert sind. Durch des Deramps des empfangenen Signals rj (t), d.h. Multiplikation des empfangenen Signals mit si (t), Filterung und Integration durch Fourier-Transformation, ist es möglich, den Bereich {Tx i, Ziel, Rx j} zu dekodieren und wieder zu erfassen. Systementwurf und Analyse Das Signal wird durch direkte digitale Synthese erzeugt. Starke Störsignale werden üblicherweise mit Bandpassfiltern hoher Ordnung unterdrückt, die häufig außerhalb des Chips eingebaut werden. Die größte Herausforderung für das System besteht darin, alternative Architekturen zu finden, die ihre Verwendung für die Single-Chip-Integration einschränken und gleichzeitig die Signalintegration und spektrale Reinheit aufrechterhalten. Die vorgeschlagene Architektur unterdrückt die aus der Mischung resultierende Bildfrequenz mit Hilfe einer modifizierten Version der herkömmlichen Hartley-Architektur. Sie umfasst einen IQ-Mischer mit einem 90°-ZF-Hybridkoppler sowie zwei LPF niedriger Ordnung in der Downconverter-Konfiguration. Die vorgeschlagene Architektur unterdrückt die von den Leistungsverstärkern (PA) erzeugten Oberwellen zweiter Ordnung mit Hilfe einer verbesserten Push-Pull-Architektur. Sie besteht aus zwei parallel geschalteten Leistungsverstärkern und zwei 180°-Hybridkopplern. Um die von den Kopplern verursachten Amplituden- und Phasenungleichgewichte zu begrenzen, wird die Verstärkung eines der Verstärker gesteuert, und wir verschieben die Phase in beiden Pfaden um 180°. Die Leistungsverstärker arbeiten in Sättigung, um die Ausgangsleistung im Vergleich zur Verwendung eines einzelnen PA zu verdoppeln..

Football As A Vehicule Of National Integration: The Case Of Cameroon

This study set out to examine the influence of football in nation-building, in which case national integration. A qualitative research method was employed whereby the contents and discourses of Cameroonian football analysts were retained and analyzed in relation to the concept of national integration. The objective was to examine the meanings which the analysts make of the role of football in national integration, peace and in cultivating collective sentiments. The data were collected during several months from some popular Cameroonian Football websites, where Cameroonians around the globe comment about Cameroonian football in particular and world football in general. The data were analyzed qualitatively along related themes to national integration. The study is particularly important in the context of Cameroon as a recurrent successful football nation in Africa because of its national unity, integration and longstanding peace, which contrast its very diverse and fragmented multicultural, multi ethnic and heterogeneous society, with over 200 ethnic groups. This record of peace which may be indicative of its national integration makes Cameroon an interesting case study to which none in the (Central and West African) sub-region may be comparable to. The strategies of the Cameroonian government in pulling together the different ethnic groups to be both, a recurrent successful football and peaceful nation were some of the issues of interest in the research. Despite the controversial natures of some of the arguments and the negative impacts of such sentiment-driven activities, the study generally suggests that, football in that particular context and other collective activities could be as important and influential as any major political or economic instruments in nation-building processes. The contribution of football seems significant in the national integration and peace processes in Cameroon. In a successful football nation like Cameroon, football may help divert attention from serious political and economic issues like poverty, government businesses, governance debates and underdevelopment. Because of the accumulated heritage in football and consequently its capacity to mobilize collective sentiments and love for the game, people especially the lay majority, tend to forget their differences because most of their attention and discourses are regularly focused on sporting events and in the case of Cameroon, football. Other literatures in the thesis suggest as well that sporting activities like football usually enhance social cohesion as well as lubricate national socio-economic and political processes. Asiasanat:Football, ethnicity, national integration, unity, tribalism