We reviewed the long-term natural history of 21 adult-onset Still's disease patients. Patient subsets were identified according to clinical course patterns. These included monocyclic systemic disease in 4, polycyclic systemic disease in 2, chronic articular monocyclic systemic disease in 10, and chronic articular polycyclic systemic disease in the remaining 5 patients. Functional outcome differed according to course patterns and the extent of articular involvement. Systemic manifestations, per se, did not contribute to poor functional prognosis. Chronic articular disease had the worst outcome: 27% evolved to functional class 111 status, compared with none in the cyclic systemic groups. Those patients who had a chronic articular pattern or a polyariticular onset and course were at higher risk to develop disabling arthritis. An aggressive approach to therapy, including the early use of remittive agents, should be considered in these patient subsets. _____

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The avalanche multiplication and excess noise properties of a range of submicron Si diodes have been investigated. In these thin diodes the excess noise is found to fall below that predicted by conventional local noise theory. Modeling of the multiplication and excess noise using a recurrence method, which includes the dead space for carrier ionization, gives good agreement with experiment. This suggests that the dead space can reduce the excess noise in submicron Si diodes.

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