Race horses, race cars, and people all are tracked by tiny transmitters The use of RFID (radio frequency identification) technology is growing at a rapid pace according to industry analysts but no one would ever think human beings would one day be excreting RFID tags.Yet, that too is happening.Radboud University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands, asked ten volunteers participating in the 92 Four Days Marches of Nijmegen — a 30-mile-per-day walking race over four days — to swallow an RFID pill that also included the tag and a thermometer. [ RFID is fast becoming a core datacenter technology. See how RFID helps IT manage its assets. ] The pill, enclosed in silicon, sends a signal to a receiving device in the volunteer’s backpack every ten seconds, relaying internal body temperature. The device in the backpack uses Bluetooth to transmit the data to a cellular phone, which in turn sends the data back to a Progress Software analysis application that the handles the complex event processing needed to handle the significant amount of data being transmitted very quickly.When asked, university officials said the pill comes out “naturally” the next day. RFID tags are also being placed inside race cars to monitor in real time the wear and tear on the cars’ components as they speed around the track.The Japanese are putting RFID tags on race horses.And in Mexico the federal police are embedding RFID tags under the skin of its highest officials as a way to limit access to high-security rooms where documents on ongoing investigations into drug traffic are stored. Databases