Free Flight Physiology: Paragliding and the Study of Extreme Altitude
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Aims We sought to describe the physiological demands and the impact of environmental stressors of paragliding, a popular and evolving form of free flight, at moderate and extreme altitudes. We recorded oxygen consumption (VO2), heart rate (HR), respiratory frequency (fR), tidal volume (VT), oxygen saturation, accelerometry (G) and altitude in eight male pilots: 9.3 hours of flight at moderate altitudes (to 3,073 m, n=4), 19.3 hours at extreme altitude (to 7,458 m, n=2) and during high-G manoeuvers (n=2). We also analysed heart rate data from 17 male pilots (138 hours). Results Overall energy expenditure at moderate altitude was low (1.7 (0.6) metabolic equivalents) but physiological parameters were notably higher during take-off (p < 0.05). Pilots transiently reached ~7 G during manoeuvres. Mean HR at extreme altitude (112 (14) bpm) were elevated compared to moderate altitude (98 (15) bpm, p = 0.048). While VT were similar (p = 0.958), elevation in fR at extreme compared to moderate altitude approached significance (p = 0.058). Conclusions Physical exertion in paragliding appears low, so any subjective fatigue felt by pilots is likely to be cognitive or environmental. Future research should focus on reducing mental workload, enhancing cognitive function and improving environmental protection.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".