A new initiative is better connecting Houstonians to their environment with an innovative project. Photo courtesy of Alvéole

Bees are glorious creatures, tasked with pollination and the no-big-deal duty of balancing our planet's ecosystem and keeping the circle of life moving. Oh, and the honey!

No surprise, then, that beekeeping is all the buzz. With that in mind, a local outlet center is launching its own honeybee colony on its rooftop. Tanger Outlets Houston is taking off with a new pollinator project, and the public is welcome to join and learn about these precious winged buddies. The project is a partnership with Alvéole, a social beekeeping company.

Expect educational bee workshops for retailers and shoppers, meant to reinforce the benefits of urban beekeeping. Resident beekeeper Evan Donoho Gregory will offer a hands-on, interactive experience designed to get shoppers sweet on honeybees and more connected to their environment, per a press release.

Gregory will also make regular visits to the center to maintain and care for the colonies; enthusiasts can follow along on social media.

A little about the hive: it's set up to allow the bees to pollinate the area's flora and thrive within a three-mile radius. At the height of the season, per press materials, each hive will contain up to 50,000 honeybees. That swarm will include some 90 percent worker bees (females) and 10 percent drones (males). Natch, each hive contains one queen bee. (There can be only one!)

With hope, the industrious honeybees will produce the equivalent of 100 jars of hyperlocal, artisanal honey per urban apiary. Tanger Outlets Houston plans to harvest the honey to share with its neighbors, per a release.

"Sharing the city with our winged neighbors is a simple, natural way to positively impact the environment," said Tanger Outlets marketing director Oliver Runco, in a statement. "We're eager to share the buzzworthy details of upcoming workshops that will educate our shoppers, brands and community on the critical role honeybees play in our ecosystem."

Bee fans can watch the progress, check out photos, videos, and upcoming beekeeper visit dates at MyHive Tanger Outlets Houston. For information on upcoming workshops, visit tangeroutlet.com/Houston and follow along on Facebook and Instagram.

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This article originally ran on CultureMap.

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Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

innovation access

Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”