A newly built elderly care center in China's eastern town of Wuzhen is using smart digital technology to improve the quality of care for its senior residents, offering them enhanced safety and greater convenience.
Established in November last year, the Wuzhen Intelligent Elderly Care Center has enhanced its services by applying a digital twin system, with residents wearing positioning devices that track their real-time movements within the center, ensuring timely assistance if needed.
"When the senior citizens are exercising within the center, we can use the system to check where they are at any moment," said Zhong Yueying, head of the center. Additionally, the center uses a smart health monitoring system to track the seniors' sleep patterns, which helps the staff offer more personalized care based on the monitored information.
"The BMI display screen shows her sleep condition last night. From the overall analysis, we can tell that she had over nine hours of light sleep and just over two hours of deep sleep. This data suggests that her sleep quality may be just average," said Zhong.
As digital technology and AI robotics become more widely used in elderly care, experts believe they can assist staff with various supportive tasks, though there are limitations.
"The general consensus is that in the future of elderly care, there are some jobs that can't be done by AI or robots, such as those that need direct contact with the body of an elderly person, but many other supportive jobs can be done by AI," said Luo Shougui, a professor at the Antai College of Economics and Management of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
Luo believes that almost 60 percent of jobs related to elderly care will be replaced in the future. He also encourages research institutes to fully work with elderly care services to understand the needs of senior citizens and develop AI products that they truly need.
Wuzhen elderly home adopts cutting-edge tech to enhance care services
The United States military hit a civil factory in Yemen's Hodeidah city amid its fresh round of airstrikes on the Houthi-held Red Sea port city on Monday night.
The privately-owned iron and steel plant, located in the Salif district north of Hodeidah city, was targeted by 12 U.S. missiles.
Footage recorded by a China Media Group (CMG) correspondent showed that the roof of the factory completely collapsed after the airstrike, and broken bricks and tiles, as well as shrapnel from artillery shells, could be seen everywhere.
The factory had to stop production due to the damage to the equipment.
"The attack on this plant will leave 250 to 300 workers unemployed, with material losses estimated between 13 million to 14 million U.S. dollars," said Saleh Atifa, Houthi-appointed head of Hodeidah's industrial department.
The U.S. military claimed that they were targeting military facilities, but the steel plant was completely an independent civilian plant, according to the Houthis.
"The brutal hostility of the U.S. military targets civilian facilities and other key facilities. Like the steel plant you see here, it belongs neither to the state nor to the military, nor to the security department or the Houthis. It is an independent civilian factory," said Hodeidah governor Abdullah Atifi.
Over the past two days, dozens of Houthi-controlled military sites, as well as dozens of residential houses, have been targeted and bombed by U.S. fighter jets across the Yemeni capital city of Sanaa, and several other northern and western provinces under Houthi control.
The tensions in the Red Sea are a visible manifestation of the spillover effects of the latest round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict centered on the Gaza Strip.
The renewed conflict in the Red Sea comes after Israel halted the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza Strip on March 2, coinciding with the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement.
On Tuesday, the Houthi group announced that it would resume launching attacks against any Israeli ship in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Bab al-Mandab Strait until the crossings of the Gaza Strip are reopened and aid is allowed in.
US military hits civil steel plant in Hodeidah, Yemen
