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A future without effective antibiotics for some infections is possible. Only 70 years ago, penicillin discovery have changed infectious diseases treatment, reducing deaths and illness. However, the high microbial adaptability has appeared few years later drug discovery: already in his Nobel Prize speech in 1945, Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, warned that bacteria could become resistant to these remarkable substances. Between 1940 and 1990, 29 classes of antibiotics with different mechanisms of action have been discovered and

Standards are a vital component of communication. In 1984, while working for CSELT, the research center of what is today Telecom Italia, I submitted RACE IVICO (Integrated Video Codec), a project aimed at developing a European microelectronic technology for digital video in partnership with representatives of most relevant European industries. The project was approved but two years later was terminated because of the jarring differences with the European audio-visual policy of that time (digital audio-video planned to play a role in the first decade of the 21^st century),