The following fairly recent articles are available from my home page at http://www.math.yorku.ca/Who/Faculty/Tholen/research.html Walter Tholen. G. Janelidze and W. Tholen: Facets of descent III: monadic descent for rings and algebras Abstract: We develop an elementary approach to the classical descent problems for modules and algebras, and their generalizations, based on the theory of monads. D. Hofmann and W. Tholen: Kleisli operations for topological spaces Abstract: The axioms for a topology in terms of open sets follow necessarily from the intuitive relation of this concept with ultrafilter convergence. By contrast, the intuitive relations between neighbourhood systems or closure operations on the one hand and ultrafilter convergence on the other lead only to pretopologies. Kleisli operations greatly facilitate categorical descriptions of topological spaces, both in terms of neighbourhood systems and (ultra)filter convergence relations.