Electrician Contractor in Ariel, SC

CHARLESTON, S.C. (WPDE) — A COVID-19 diagnosis has turned a Myrtle Beach teen's life upside-down.

Lauren Hocin said her 13-year-old daughter, Ariel Griffith, wasn't feeling well in early December.

She said her husband, Ariel's stepfather, had tested positive for COVID-19, so she figured Ariel had it too.

"We figured okay we have coronavirus, we can tough it out. We'll just manage the symptoms at home. But then one morning, she started throwing up," Hocin said.

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Hocin said she began to notice her daughter's lymph nodes were incredibly swollen too. It turns out they had been swollen for weeks, but Ariel had been reluctant to tell her family members because she didn't want to worry them.

She decided to take Ariel to the doctor.

"They did a blood test and her white blood cell count was really low, her platelets were really low," she said. The doctors confirmed she had COVID-19 and recommended Ariel head to a hospital.

At Grand Strand Medical Center, Hocin said Ariel was doing okay, so they sent her home. But that night, her condition took a turn for the worse.

"That same night that we came home from the hospital, she spiked to a 102.8 fever, then a fever the next day," she said.

She took her back to Grand Strand Medical. This time, Ariel wasn't doing as well.

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"Her labs were crazy, she had sepsis, started having a little bit of pneumonia in her chest," she said. "We knew there might have been something else going on but we couldn't figure it out. She was getting worse, so I started to ask to go to MUSC."

At MUSC in Charleston, doctors delivered the news that Ariel has leukemia.

"I lost all the breath in my lungs. I couldn't breathe. I literally felt dizzy like I felt like I was going to fall on the floor," Hocin said.

She said the diagnosis was shocking because she was seemingly a healthy kid. In fact, she had just made her school's basketball team.

Ariel quickly began chemotherapy. She's been at MUSC for weeks now. She even spent Christmas there. Hocin said she could go into remission after the first 30 days, but she'll likely have to undergo chemo treatments for the next two years. That also means the Ocean Bay Middle School student won't be able to return to the classroom anytime soon.

"This also means she can't go to school until 2022," she said. "She's been virtual and was signed to go back to brick and mortar on February first and now she won't be able to do that."

Teachers at both Ten Oaks Middle School and Ocean Bay Middle School posted the video below on YouTube to wish Ariel well.

Hocin said she believes the chemotherapy is helping with her sepsis and other COVID-19 symptoms, though. This Monday, Ariel finally got off a ventilator -- a huge victory.

"When they put a tube down your kid and you can't hear what they're saying and they're obviously agitated, it's the worst thing ever. It's life support," Hocin said.

Hocin said now she feels like Ariel is slowly beginning to overcome COVID-19, but she worries about any long-term effects it may have on her young daughter.

"It just felt like we needed to overcome the coronavirus so that we can move onto the leukemia," she said.

Hocin said she's in awe of all of the support the community has shown her family every step of the way.

"I call them Ariel's angels. They've just really given us the strength and helped us with everything. Things we didn't even know we'd need," she said.

A GoFundMe page was started to help with Ariel's medical expenses. The page has now garnered more than $31 thousand in donations.

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Although COVID-19 isn't something any parent would ever wish upon their child, Hocin said she's thankful it opened her eyes to what Ariel is suffering from.

"We may not have known about the leukemia if she hadn't gotten coronavirus," she said.

Hocin said she's encouraged by the fact that Ariel is off a ventilator and is looking forward to the day her best friend can return home.

"I was a single, divorced mom for a little while. So it was just me and her for a really long time," she said. "Ariel is a wonderful kid. She has been the most blessing of a child since she was little."

She said she expects her daughter to be able to return home to the Grand Strand at the beginning of February.

To answer the most important immediate question first, “yes.” As in, “Yes, the ‘700’ part of ‘DDMWorks Ariel Atom 700’ means 700 horsepower.” We were pretty excited to hear about this development, too.

DDMWorks is a Piedmont, South Carolina-based company that does custom parts work for Atoms and other performance vehicles. The company sent us a press release yesterday, telling of its all new program to convert your Ariel Atom 2, that of the 2.0-liter GM-sourced Ecotec engine, into a snarling thing of ungodly power levels and cruel intentions towards lap records.

The frightening 350 horsepower per liter is developed by way of supercharging and turbocharging the four-cylinder mill, offering, as the company undersells it, “great low end response with high end power.” That’s a bit like noting that the Great Wall Of China has, “quite a number of bricks.” The result is a car that, at around 1450 pounds, boasts a power to weight ratio of one horsepower for every two pounds of vehicle—don’t wear your clean fire suit the first time you drive it.

Pistons, con rods, (massive) injectors, fuel pump, exhaust, and, of course, the various cooling systems have all been significantly upgrade for the DDMWorks Atom, all aimed at creating that massive power without making the engine go “boom” right away. The conversion also includes upgraded wheels and tires, to get all of that power to the ground.

Perhaps sensing that not every driver with enough money (no price listed) to convert his Atom, will also possess the requisite minimum skill to drive it, DDMWorks offers selectable power levels for the car, too: 450, 575, and 700 horsepower. The company also mentions, “…we strongly suggest our customers take a specialized driving course for their safety…” Indeed.

Please scroll down to read the full DDMWorks press release.

700HP DDMWorks Twin-charged Ariel Atom – Creates most powerful Ariel Atom in the World

Piedmont, SC August 1st, 2012 – DDMWorks is pleased to announce the first Ariel Atom 700 conversion. The Ariel Atom 700 conversion is based on the Ariel Atom 2 using the 2.0L Ecotec engine. The Ariel Atom 700 combines both a supercharger and a turbo on one engine to produce 700hp, which is an amazing 350hp/liter. Even with the amazing power per liter, the twincharged engine offers great low end response with high end power, all in only 2.0L of displacement.

To accomplish this amount of power per liter safely, extensive modifications are done to the stock Ecotec 2.0L. The engine is fitted with many upgrades including Darton Mid sleeves, custom ceramic coated Wiseco pistons, H-beam Carrillo connecting rods, and ARP hardware. Then the original M62 supercharger is re-installed along with a Garrett GTX 3076 turbocharger to supply the airflow required to reach the 700hp goal. Fueling is supplied by 1100cc injectors and a massive Aeromotive 1000 fuel pump. A custom air-to-water heat exchanger is used to cool the supercharger output along with a gigantic air-to-air intercooler in the rear to cool the air from the turbo, both units custom made for the conversion by Griffin Thermal Products. The conversion uses a pair of boost controllers to control the boost feeding the engine from the supercharger and turbo. One of the controllers is hooked up to a Tial MV-R water cooled wastegate to keep the turbo boost at 35psi on high boost. A second boost controller is used to turn the supercharger off once the turbo pressure exceeds the output of the supercharger, increasing efficiency and allowing more power to get to the ground.

Exhaust, intercooler tubing, and tubular exhaust manifold are all custom made in house by DDMWork’s talented fabricators and fitted to the car by hand, then finished off with ceramic coating. Final custom tuning of the ECM and boost controllers is also done in house on our load bearing Dynocom dyno to verify the 700hp before delivery.

To handle the power of the conversion, 225mm wide Toyo R888’s are mounted on custom 16×7 wheels up front and 275mm R888’s mounted on custom 17×9 wheels in the rear.

The end result, the 1450 pound Ariel Atom 700 achieves a Power to weight ratio that exceeds most all production cars, including exotics, with only 2.07 pounds per horsepower! Along with this amazing power to weight, the power is selectable by the driver while driving, with 3 selectable power levels of 450, 575 and 700hp.

With the power of the Atom 700 conversion, we strongly suggest our customers take a specialized driving course for their safety, like the Ariel Atom experience offered at Virginia International Raceway by TMI.

The Atom 700 Twin-charged and other custom Ariel Atom conversions of many power levels are currently available with installation and tuning at our facility in South Carolina. Pricing is dependent on options and power requested, please contact us for an individual price quote.

DDMWorks is located near Greenville, SC and produces custom performance upgrade parts for the Ariel Atom and other vehicles.

SIMPSONVILLE, S.C. —

A Greenville County couple is behind bars, charged with homicide by child abuse involving their adoptive daughter.

A judge denied bond to Ariel Robinson, 29, and her husband, Jerry Robinson, 34, of Simpsonville on Tuesday.

Ariel Robinson earned both local and national recognition back in August when she won the Food Network’s show “Worst Cooks in America."

According to arrest warrants, the Robinsons inflicted a "series of blunt force injuries" to a 3-year-old, who the Greenville County Coroner’s office identified as Victoria Smith.

Smith passed away at the hospital.

WYFF News 4 has learned Smith was adopted by the Robinson family after spending most of her life as a foster child.

“When she entered a room, all eyes were on her, because she demanded it and she was a cutie,” Tiffany Huggins said.

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Huggins and her husband, Cameron, were foster parents to Smith for 10 months, right before the Robinson's adopted her.

They said she instantly clicked with their family.

Her smile was contagious and she enjoyed singing and riding her bike.

They also said she knew how to grab attention.

“She was just a natural,” Tiffany Huggins said. “She had the best personality and I’m not just saying that cause I was her momma, but she was just our light. She was a beautiful child, inside and out."

"She blended into our family," Cameron Huggins said.

Ariel Robinson sat down with WYFF News 4 in August 2020 after winning the show.

At the time, she told the television crew the $25,000 grand prize would go a long way to help her and her husband, who recently adopted three children. Smith was one of them.

“I just know that the Lord had his hands on me and he had a purpose for me to go on there,” she said in August. “He knew we were going through this adoption, we really could use the money and he just let everything work out for our good.”

The former middle school teacher was a local comedian.

Justin Williams, an entertainment producer, booked her to perform at a Pickens County BBQ event back in November.

“She was hilarious, she was super sweet to everybody around her and she expressed a passion for working with children and working with just the community in general,” he said.

Many questions remain as Smith’s loved ones remember the 3-year-old’s impact on their lives.

“She just had so much to offer,” Cameron Huggins said.

“And she’s gonna be missed by many, many, many people,” Tiffany said.

In a statement to WYFF News 4, Wednesday afternoon a DSS spokesperson said:

“The South Carolina Department of Social Services is aware of allegations and the arrests made and is investigating along with law enforcement. The agency’s standard procedures in a case like this involves taking appropriate action with any children remaining in the home after evaluating safety and risk.”

SLED is investigating.

Structured Abstract

The human reference genome has served as the foundation for many large-scale initiatives, including the collective effort to catalog the epigenome, the set of marks and protein interactions that act to control gene activity and cellular function. However, for more than two decades, efforts to construct a complete epigenome have been hampered by an incomplete reference genome. With recent technological advances, we can now study genome structure and function comprehensively across a complete telomere-to-telomere human genome assembly, T2T-CHM13. As a result, we can now broaden the human epigenome to include 225 million base pairs (Mbp) of additional sequence.

The epigenome refers to DNA modifications (e.g., CpG methylation), protein-DNA interactions, histone modifications, and chromatin organization that collectively influence gene expression, genome regulation, and genome stability. These epigenetic features are heritable upon cell division but dynamic during development, generating profiles that are unique to different tissues and cell types. Here, we present an epigenetic annotation of the human genome in which we explore previously unresolved regions, including acrocentric chromosome short arms, segmentally duplicated genes, and a diverse collection of repeat classes, including human centromeres. Generating a complete epigenetic annotation of the previously missing 8% of the human genome provides a foundation for elucidating the functional roles of these genomic elements that are critical to our understanding of genome regulation, function, and evolution.

Completion of the human epigenome required that we develop approaches to profiling the previously unresolved regions. Using the T2T-CHM13 reference with existing short-read epigenetic data, we identified 3 to 19% more enrichment sites for epigenetic markers. However, even with the complete reference, these short-read epigenetic methods cannot correctly resolve regions of the genome of high similarity, including segmental duplications, gene paralogs, or large repeat arrays. On the other hand, long-read epigenetic methods can resolve single-molecule epigenetic patterns within these regions by anchoring to flanking or infrequent unique regions, providing a foundational assessment of these areas. Long-read methylation calls using the T2T-CHM13 assembly increased the number of probeable CpG sites by 10% (3.2 M), revealing epigenetic patterning of genomic regions that were previously intractable. We generated long-read methylomes of distinct developmental time points and surveyed >99% of the genome’s CpGs. We probed highly homologous gene families and observed paralog-specific differences in regulation between disease and nondisease states. In tandem repeats, we identified differences in epigenetic regulation between genetically identical sequences present across different genomic locations, observing locus- and single-molecule-level differences in methylation. Our analysis revealed that these regions vary in epigenetic and transcriptional activity despite high sequence identity, highlighting the importance of the local chromosome environment as a modulator of epigenetics. Finally, the T2T-CHM13 genome assembly has opened exploration of the human centromere, enabling us to probe the epigenetic elements that define centromeric chromatin. The centromere is the site of assembly of the kinetochore complex, an essential complex for eukaryotic cell division. We generated complete epigenetic maps of human centromeres, revealing epigenetic markers of centromere activity that denote active human kinetochores. We predicted kinetochore site localization within active centromeres and report variability of kinetochore localization across individuals representing diverse ancestry.

The improvements in epigenetic profiling using T2T-CHM13 set the foundation for complete assemblies and long-read epigenetics for major biological advancements. Using technological advances in genome resequencing and alignment, we present a comprehensive functional assessment of previously unresolved genomic regions. This study marks the start of exploration into duplicated and repetitive portions of the epigenome, pioneering the exploration of epigenetics in a complete human genome.

Abstract

The completion of a telomere-to-telomere human reference genome, T2T-CHM13, has resolved complex regions of the genome, including repetitive and homologous regions. Here, we present a high-resolution epigenetic study of previously unresolved sequences, representing entire acrocentric chromosome short arms, gene family expansions, and a diverse collection of repeat classes. This resource precisely maps CpG methylation (32.28 million CpGs), DNA accessibility, and short-read datasets (166,058 previously unresolved chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing peaks) to provide evidence of activity across previously unidentified or corrected genes and reveals clinically relevant paralog-specific regulation. Probing CpG methylation across human centromeres from six diverse individuals generated an estimate of variability in kinetochore localization. This analysis provides a framework with which to investigate the most elusive regions of the human genome, granting insights into epigenetic regulation.

While all companies and people must share data to access and improve the goods and services that carry us through life, that doesn’t mean we must give up our privacy. We understand that breaches have become inevitable, as bad actors just need to find a single weak point in a complex system. But why should that mean that our sensitive information has to remain at constant risk?

It should not. And yet, the recent Cyberserve breach by Iranian-linked Black Shadow demonstrates once again that no one should assume that their confidential information is safe, even in the hands of seemingly trustworthy people. By breaching Tel Aviv data hosting company Cyberserve, Black Shadow gained access to sensitive personal information held by a number of Cyberserve customers — most notably, the highly-sensitive information held by Atraf, an LGBTQ dating platform similar to Tinder or OK Cupid.

Black Shadow demanded a $1 million ransom payment from Cyberserve, and when the hackers did not receive payment, they released names, health information, including HIV status, and sexual orientation of Atraf customers — presumably including people who haven’t officially come out of the closet. A few days later, they released even more personal information on Atraf customers.

The database released was packed with personal information and detailed identifiers (full names, emails and phone numbers) and highly-sensitive information about their users (sex, sexual preference, marital status and health concerns). To appreciate the scope of this leak, consider that Atraf’s database features over 100 organized columns detailing different user properties.

Atraf needs this personal information to run its service. And it’s safe to assume that users of the service assumed their privacy was protected and they were unaware of (or intentionally ignoring) the risk they were taking.

Who’s responsible in this case?

The answer is both: Cyberserve for having inadequate perimeter protection, letting Black Shadow into the cyber premises. And Atraf, for failing to exercise industry-recognized, relatively basic protection for its customer privacy. Let’s focus on Atraf and privacy.

Atraf could have used tokenization to depersonalize the data they hold on their customers, rendering it useless to hackers and blackmailers by separating the data tables of personally identifiable information (PII) from the real identities of the people it describes. Tokenization has become integral to pseudonymization, the best practice of reducing the privacy risk of data-sets to zero by scrubbing them of PII. Of the more than 120 properties Atraf stored on each user, segregating merely 10 key identifiers would have done the trick and kept all this information private.

Tokenization substitutes sensitive information with equivalent non-sensitive information. The non-sensitive, replacement information, called a token, gets created using cryptography, a hash function, or a randomly generated index identifier. The token exists in the database, and the PII personally that it replaces gets stored in a tightly-controlled and monitored dedicated server.

This is hardly a revolutionary idea — regulations like GDPR and CCPA have been recommending pseudonymization for years. So why aren’t companies complying, particularly new, born-on-the-web companies that can incorporate privacy into the design of their service from the start? It’s a question those in the industry should ask more often, particularly considering the persistent leakage of health records, credit card data, government IDs like social security numbers, and myriad details of our personal lives.

It’s true that systems of many organizations were built without privacy in mind. PII and other sensitive information have been mixed in and lost with the rest of an organization’s non-sensitive data and copied and replicated across many systems and databases. In this situation, it’s almost unfeasible to regain control over this scattered information and protect customers privacy.

I understand it’s a daunting effort to retrofit privacy protections into massive databases. But with the cloud and advances in privacy engineering, it can get done. We should not have to give up our expectation of privacy to participate in the modern, cyber world.

Ariel Shiftan, chief technology officer, Piiano