Introduction During the last decade survival rates of preterm children continuously improve. It is under debate whether this influences the incidence of cerebral palsy (CP). Objective To determine changes in incidence of CP and motor disorders in preterm children since 2004, and to identify associated factors. Methods We included all infants born < 32 weeks, admitted to our tertiary NICU, born in 2004–2005 (period-I) and in 2008–2009 (period-II). We excluded children transferred from other tertiary NICUs, with major malformations, and neuromuscular disorders. We compared the incidence of CP and other motor disorders at the age of 2 years. To identify potential risk factors, we used the Nursery Neurobiologic Risk Score (NBRS), including pH, ventilation, infection, convulsions, intraventricular hemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia, and hypoglycemia. Results 558 children were included; 269 period-I and 289 period-II. The incidence in CP was not significantly different: 5.6% vs 6.6%, respectively. The number of children with other motor disorders was significantly higher in period-I than in period-II: 15 vs 5 (5.6% vs 1.7%, p< 0.05). NBRS-scores were median 2.5 vs 2.0 (p=0.12). In period-I, pH and infection contributed more to a higher NBRS, whereas mild periventricular leukomalacia did in period-II (all p< 0.05). Total and subscores of the NBRS were strongly related to CP (p< 0.01), apart from hypoglycemia in both periods, and ventilation and suspected infections in period-I. Conclusions Since 2004, the incidence of CP in preterm children did not change, but rates of other motor disorders decreased, without considerable changes in associated risk factors.

Manned long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars set high operational, human factors and technical demands for a distributed support system, which enhances human-machine teams' capabilities to cope autonomously with unexpected, complex and potentially hazardous situations. Based on a situated Cognitive Engineering (sCE) method, we specified a theoretical and empirical founded Requirements Baseline (RB) for such a system (called Mission Execution Crew Assistant; MECA), and its rational consisting of scenarios and use cases, user experience claims, and core support functions. The MECA system comprises distributed personal ePartners that help the team to assess the situation, to determine a suitable course of actions to solve a problem, and to safeguard the astronauts from failures. In addition to standard requirements reviews, we tested and refined the RB via storyboarding and human-in-the-loop evaluations of a simulation-based prototype in a virtual environment with 15 participants. The evaluation results confirmed the claims on effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, learnability, situation awareness, trust and emotion. Issues for improvement and further research were identified and prioritized (e.g., acceptance of mental load and emotion sensing). In general, the sCE method provided a reviewed set of 167 high-level requirements that explicitly refers to the tested scenarios, claims and core support functions on health management, diagnosis, prognosis & prediction, collaboration, resource management, planning, and sense-making. A first version of an ontology for this support was implemented in the prototype, which will be used for further ePartner development.