Documentation

This section is dedicated to all the documentation that we consider related to our domains of expertise and those of our affiliates.

Chemistry:

- Rhodium's Chemistry Archive

Although it had been in operation since 1997, The Hive gained broader awareness in 2001 when a Dateline NBC special The "X" Files aired. This investigation into the use and production of MDMA featured the Hive and its founder, who operated under the pseudonym 'Strike' (Hobart Huson). Strike was the founder and site designer of the Hive as well as the author of several popular books (Total Synthesis I and II, and Sources) instructing readers how to synthesize a variety of amphetamines (specifically MDMA), obtain equipment and chemicals, and avoid prosecution. He remained anonymous until Dateline's investigation and interviews revealed that Hobart Huson (owner of the Strike-recommended laboratory supplier "Science Alliance") was the man behind Strike. The NBC program showed Huson/Strike at his office/chemical warehouse, complete with a stuffed bee sitting by his computer. The program led to Huson's arrest and imprisonment, but also spurred the site's growth. A person by the username 'Rhodium' and a small group of dedicated individuals actually ran the Hive and its sister site Rhodium.ws for most of the sites' lifespans.

While The Hive was a public forum for asking questions and exchanging information, Rhodium.ws hosted a collection of drug synthesis information in more condensed and organized form, much of it derived from messages posted on the Hive. It also had a large collection of articles from academic journals, plus considerable general-purpose information on practical chemistry. Rhodium's site was also taken offline shortly after the Hive. Most of the archive is hosted by Erowid.

https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/chemistry/index.html

- PiHKAL - By Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin

PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story is a book by Dr. Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin, published in 1991. The subject of the work is psychoactive phenethylamine chemical derivatives, notably those that act as psychedelics and/or empathogen-entactogens. The main title, PiHKAL, is an acronym that stands for "Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved." The book is arranged into two parts, the first part being a fictionalized autobiography of the couple and the second part describing 179 different psychedelic compounds (most of which Shulgin discovered himself), including detailed synthesis instructions, bioassays, dosages, and other commentary. The second part was made freely available by Shulgin on Erowid while the first part is available only in the printed text. While the reactions described are beyond the ability of people with a basic chemistry education, some tend to emphasize techniques that do not require difficult-to-obtain chemicals. Notable among these are the use of mercury-aluminum amalgam (an unusual but easy to obtain reagent) as a reducing agent and detailed suggestions on legal plant sources of important drug precursors such as safrole.

https://www.thevespiary.org/library/Files_Uploaded_by_Users/llamabox/PiHKAL.pdf

- TiHKAL - By Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin

TIHKAL: The Continuation is a 1997 book written by Alexander Shulgin and Ann Shulgin about a family of psychoactive drugs known as tryptamines. A sequel to PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, TIHKAL is an acronym that stands for "Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved".

TIHKAL, much like its predecessor PIHKAL, is divided into two parts. The first part, for which all rights are reserved, begins with a fictionalized autobiography, picking up where the similar section of PIHKAL left off; it then continues with a collection of essays on topics ranging from psychotherapy and the Jungian mind to the prevalence of DMT in nature, ayahuasca and the War on Drugs. The second part of TIHKAL, which may be conditionally distributed for non-commercial reproduction (see external links below), is a detailed synthesis manual for 55 psychedelic compounds (many discovered by Alexander Shulgin himself), including their chemical structures, dosage recommendations, and qualitative comments. Shulgin has made the second part freely available on Erowid.org while the first part is available only in the printed text.

As with PIHKAL, the Shulgins were motivated to release the synthesis information as a way to protect the public's access to information about psychedelic compounds, a goal Alexander Shulgin has noted many times.[1] Following a raid of his laboratory in 1994 by the United States DEA,[2] Richard Meyer, spokesman for DEA's San Francisco Field Division, stated that "It is our opinion that those books [referring to the previous work, PIHKAL] are pretty much cookbooks on how to make illegal drugs. Agents tell me that in clandestine labs that they have raided, they have found copies of those books."

https://www.thevespiary.org/rhodium/Rhodium/hive/hiveboard/picproxie_docs/000532880-Alexander_Shulgin_and_Ann_Shulgin_-_TiHKAL.pdf

- Potential drug abuse therapeutics derived from the hallucinogenic natural product salvinorin A

By Katherine M. Prevatt-Smith, Kimberly M. Lovell, Denise S. Simpson, Victor W. Day, Justin T. Douglas, Peter Bosch, Christina M. Dersch, Richard B. Rothman, Bronwyn Kivell and Thomas E. Prisinzano

Previous structure–activity relationship studies of salvinorin A have shown that modification of the acetate functionality off the C-2 position to a methoxy methyl or methoxy ethyl ether moiety leads to increased potency at KOP receptors. However, the reason for this increase remains unclear. Here we report our efforts towards the synthesis and evaluation of C-2 constrained analogs of salvinorin A. These analogs were evaluated at opioid receptors in radioligand binding experiments as well as in the GTP-g-S functional assay. One compound, 5, was found to have affinity and potency at k opioid (KOP) receptors comparable to salvinorin A. In further studies, 5 was found to attenuate cocaine-induced drug seeking behavior in rats comparably to salvinorin A. This finding represents the first example of a salvinorin A analog that has demonstrated anti-addictive capabilities.

DOI: 10.1039/c1md00192b

https://sci-hub.se/10.1039/c1md00192b

- Synthesis and in vitro pharmacological studies of new C(2)modified salvinorin A analogues

By David Y.W. Lee, Vishnu V.R. Karnati, Minsheng He, Lee-Yuan Liu-Chen, Leelakrishna Kondaveti, Zhongze Ma, Yulin Wang, Yong Chen, Cecile Beguin, William A. Carlezon, Jr. and Bruce Cohen

Salvinorin A is the most potent naturally occurring opioid agonist yet discovered with high selectivity and aﬃnity for j-opioid receptor. To explore its structure and activity relationships, a series of salvinorin A derivatives modiﬁed at the C(2) position were prepared and studied. These salvinorin A derivatives were screened for binding and functional activities at the human j-opioid receptor. Compound 4, containing a methoxymethyl group at the 2-position, was a full j-agonist with an EC 50 value at 0.6 nM, which is about 7 times more potent than salvinorin A.

DOI: 10.1016/j.bmcl.2005.05.048

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bmcl.2005.05.048

- Detection and characterization of emerging psychoactive substances by ion mobility spectrometry

By Sergio Armenta, Salvador Garrigues, Miguel de la Guardia, Judit Brassier, Manel Alcalà, Marcelo Blanco, Clara Perez-Alfonso and Nieves Galipienso

Rapid detection and identiﬁcation of novel psychoactive substances (NPS) continues to present signiﬁcant analytical challenges to forensic and analytical chemists. Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) has been traditionally considered as the analytical technique of choice to detect illicit drugs in security points in airports, borderlines and customs. Databases of the reduced mobility (K 0 ) values of illicit drugs are available in the scientiﬁc literature and they should be completed with data of emerging designer drugs. In this paper, we have evaluated the effect of different measurement conditions and determined the K 0 values of an important number of NPS including different families; such as phenethylamines, cathinones, synthetic cannabinoids and tryptamines among others to be incorporated to the existing data to provide a rapid detection and identiﬁcation of this emerging threat.

DOI: 10.1002/dta.1678

https://sci-hub.se/10.1002/dta.1678

Pharmacology:

- Rhodium's Pharmacology Archive

https://erowid.org/archive/rhodium/pharmacology/index.html

Biology:

N/A

Biometrics:

- Fingerprint Alteration Jianjiang Feng, Anil K. Jain, and Arun Ross

The widespread deployment of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS) in law enforcement and border control applications has heightened the need for ensuring that the security afforded by these systems is not compromised. While several issues related to fingerprint system security have been investigated in the past, including the use of fake fingerprints for masquerading identity, the problem of fingerprint alteration or obfuscation has received no attention in the biometric literature.
Fingerprint obfuscation refers to the deliberate alteration of the fingerprint pattern by an individual for the purpose of masking his or her identity. Several cases of fingerprint obfuscation have been described in the media. Existing image quality assessment software cannot detect such altered fingerprints since the implicit image quality during alteration may not change significantly.
The goal of this paper is to understand the problem of altered fingerprints and to design solutions that can be used to detect these images.

https://www.cse.msu.edu/~rossarun/pubs/FengJainRoss_AlteredFingerprint_TechReport09.pdf

Electronics:

- Passive RFID Basics

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems use radio frequency to identify, locate and track people, assets, and animals. Passive RFID systems are composed of three components – an interrogator (reader), a passive tag, and a host computer. The tag is composed of an antenna coil and a silicon chip that includes basic modulation circuitry and non-volatile memory. The tag is energized by a time-varying electromagnetic radio frequency (RF) wave that is transmitted by the reader. This RF signal is called a carrier signal. When the RF field passes through an antenna coil, there is an AC voltage generated across the coil. This voltage is rectified to supply power to the tag. The information stored in the tag is transmitted back to the reader. This is often called backscattering. By detecting the backscattering signal, the information stored in the tag can be fully identified.

https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/00680b.pdf

- MIFARE ULTRALIGHT User Manual - Release 1.0.0

The MIFARE® CLASSIC family, including the MIFARE® Ultralight, is the most widely used contactless smart card ICs operating in the 13.56 MHz frequency range with read/write capability and ISO/IEC 14443 A compliance. Smart cards based on MIFARE® are a commonly known solution in various applications such as:

• Access Control
• Public Transportation
• Electronic Toll Collection
• Loyalty Cards
• Event Ticketing
• Car Parking
• and many more...

MIFARE Ultralight family of tags is being used in short range (up to 10 centimeters - depends on tag and antenna size) RFID applications include single trip or limited use tickets in public transportation networks, loyalty cards or day passes for events. It serves as a replacement for conventional ticketing solutions such as paper tickets, magnetic stripe tickets or coins. It is also a perfect ticketing counterpart to contactless card families such as MIFARE® DESFire or MIFARE® Plus. It also supports anti-collision feature so that multiple cards in the field can work.

Note: This document focuses quick understanding of the MIFARE® Ultralight EV1 (and MIFARE® Ultra- light) cards and their usage. For more information about the MIFARE® Ultralight EV1 family of tags please refer NXP Semiconductor datasheets.

https://shop.sonmicro.com/Downloads/MIFAREULTRALIGHT-UM.pdf

- MF0ULX1 MIFARE Ultralight EV1 - Contactless ticket IC - Rev. 3.3

NXP Semiconductors developed the MIFARE Ultralight EV1 MF0ULx1 for use in a contactless smart ticket, smart card or token in combination with a Proximity Coupling Device (PCD). The MF0ULx1 is designed to work in an ISO/IEC 14443 Type A compliant environment (see [1]). The target applications include single trip or limited use tickets in public transportation networks, loyalty cards or day passes for events. The MF0ULx1 serves as a replacement for conventional ticketing solutions such as paper tickets, magnetic stripe tickets or coins. It is also a perfect ticketing counterpart to contactless card families such as MIFARE DESFire or MIFARE Plus.

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/MF0ULX1.pdf

- NTAG213/215/216 NFC Forum Type 2 Tag compliant IC with 144/504/888 bytes user memory - Rev. 3.2

NTAG213, NTAG215 and NTAG216 have been developed by NXP Semiconductors as standard NFC tag ICs to be used in mass market applications such as retail, gaming and consumer electronics, in combination with NFC devices or NFC compliant Proximity Coupling Devices. NTAG213, NTAG215 and NTAG216 (from now on, generally called NTAG21x) are designed to fully comply to NFC Forum Type 2 Tag (Ref. 2) and ISO/IEC14443 Type A (Ref. 1) specifications. Target applications include Out-of-Home and print media smart advertisement, SoLoMo applications, product authentication, NFC shelf labels, mobile companion tags. Target use cases include Out-of-Home smart advertisement, product authentication, mobile companion tags, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi pairing, electronic shelf labels and business cards. NTAG21x memory can also be segmented to implement multiple applications at the same time.

https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/NTAG213_215_216.pdf