Dr Seelig first tried the chip after the 11 September attacks
The carnage inflicted by bomb attacks in Egypt, London and across Iraq has raised the problem of how the authorities identify people in an emergency situation.
Whether through natural disaster or man-made, the killing of large numbers of people presents a great challenge to the emergency services, who have to identify the victims as quickly as possible.
One aid to identification advocated by an American company is the VeriChip, a small device containing a unique number injected into a person's arm.
During 11 September, some rescue workers, aware of the huge dangers they were facing, took to writing their badge number on their skin, in case they became victims themselves.
Their attempts to ensure their own identity should the worst happen was spotted by New Jersey surgeon Richard Seelig. Five days later, he injected himself with two rice grain-sized chips, containing a unique number which could be used to identify him.
"I wanted to demonstrate its effectiveness as being used as an identifier for people," Dr Seelig told BBC World Service's Analysis programme.
"Also, I wanted to show it could be as comfortable for a person as not having one, so that it wouldn't interfere with that person's daily life."
Losing anonymity
Following the Asian tsunami which struck on Boxing Day 2004, many thousands of bodies could only be identified by DNA testing - a process that, in some cases, took months to complete.
Similarly, following the bomb blasts on the London Underground, the process of identifying some bodies - particularly on the deep-lying Piccadilly Line - became very difficult, with some families upset by the amount of time it took to confirm a relative had died.
VeriChip advocates argue it could help in these circumstances.
Dr Seelig is now vice president for medical applications at VeriChip, which makes the devices - although it is yet to make a profit.
Tiny tubes are implanted in cancer cells
Nanotechnology has been harnessed to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue.
The technique works by inserting microscopic synthetic rods called carbon nanotubules into cancer cells.
When the rods are exposed to near-infra red light from a laser they heat up, killing the cell, while cells without rods are left unscathed.
Details of the Stanford University work are published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It's actually quite simple and amazing
Dr Hongjie Dai
Researcher Dr Hongjie Dai said: "One of the longstanding problems in medicine is how to cure cancer without harming normal body tissue.
"Standard chemotherapy destroys cancer cells and normal cells alike.
"That's why patients often lose their hair and suffer numerous other side effects.
"For us, the Holy Grail would be finding a way to selectively kill cancer cells and not damage healthy ones."
Many in cell
The carbon nanotubules used by the Stanford team are only half the width of a DNA molecule, and thousands can easily fit inside a typical cell.
