Lewis Hamilton’s world championship lead has been cut to three points with just four races remaining, after the British driver was pipped to the Italian grand prix at Monza by his McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso.

Hamilton, 22, finished second behind the Spaniard with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen third. The result means the title race is effectively a face off between the two McLaren drivers - Hamilton now has 92 points to Alonso’s 89 and Raikkonen’s 74 - though all is dependant on the outcome of a hearing of the governing body in Paris on Thursday that could wreck their title hopes.

Hamilton had another highly impressive afternoon but the British rookie was doomed to follow in the Spaniard’s slipstream after his team-mate secured pole position in Saturday’s qualifying.

He crossed the line six seconds behind double world champion Alonso, who celebrated his 19th career win and fourth of the season.

Ferrari, winners four times in the previous five seasons at the temple of Italian motorsport, had to make do with Kimi Raikkonen’s third place. Filipe Massa, fourth in the title standings on 69 points, suffered a major blow with retirement after just 10 laps of his team’s home race after starting in third place. Massa’s title hopes took a severe dent, with the Brazilian now 23 points off the lead despite having three wins to his credit.

Raikkonen fell further behind in the title reckoning, 18 points adrift of Hamilton, who highlighted his talents further by overtaking the Ferrari for second place with a brilliant move after his final pitstop.

Germany’s Nick Heidfeld was fourth for BMW Sauber with Polish team mate Robert Kubica fifth and Germany’s Nico Rosberg sixth for Williams. Finland’s Heikki Kovalainen was seventh for champions Renault while Briton Jenson Button took his and Honda’s second point of the season in eighth place.

While Alonso led from pole position, Hamilton created the early fireworks at the start when he clawed back second place by going around the outside of Massa at the first corner after the Brazilian had gone past him.

McLaren lead Ferrari by 166 points to 143 in the constructors’ championship, pending Thursday’s hearing and another appeal by the Mercedes-powered team to try and claim back 15 points lost in Hungary last month.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., June 19 (UPI) — Silicon Valley Solar announced it secured $10.2 million and completed its acquisition of NuEdison.

The California-based manufacturer of flat plate internal concentrator solar modules completed its Series A funding round totaling $10.2 million with the lead investor Bessemer Venture Partners.

“BVP is an outstanding partner to provide the necessary capital for the next major step in SV Solar’s development as a company,” said Pat Callinan, chief executive officer of SV Solar. “In addition to their long track record of growing successful companies, they have an up-to-date focus on Cleantech providing an invaluable network of contacts and market specific expertise.

“Now with the acquisition of NuEdison … we’ve significantly enhanced our capability to provide compelling solutions to the market that achieve new levels of price performance.”

SV Solar has established a broad network of business relationships that include a 10 megawatt purchase order from Pacific Power Management, a contract manufacturing agreement with GSS, a cell sourcing agreement with ErSol and a collaboration agreement with Conergy.

The Series A funding will be used for the process development, equipment, materials and staffing required to mature the company’s Sol-X technology to commercial form.

“I’m very excited about the opportunity to join SV Solar,” said Joe Lichy, President and founder of NuEdison. “We have very complementary technologies and resources, and it was clear to me that together we could build better products at lower cost. My discussions with Pat and the rest of the leadership team convinced me that this would be a powerful, synergistic combination.”

Sunglasses that give some sight to the blind. Pacemaker-like devices that block intractable pain. These wonders are possible because chipmakers such as Texas Instruments ( ) have identified an important new growth area: high-tech medicine.

Beth McDonald’s story shows how this development can change patients’ lives. Almost 20 years ago she fell and damaged the nerves in her left leg. The injury left her with chronic pain so severe that she spent 17 years in a wheelchair, underwent 28 surgeries, and finally had her leg amputated. Then, in late 2005, her doctor told her about spinal cord stimulation, a new treatment for chronic pain. He implanted a tape-measure-size device called the Eon, from Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc., in her lower back. Designed around an ultra-low-power TI microprocessor, this pacemaker for the spinal cord emits mild electrical pulses that mask the nervous system’s pain messages. McDonald, 41, now walks comfortably with a prosthetic leg, and recently climbed 219 steps to the summit of Florida’s St. Augustine Lighthouse. “I’ve gotten to play with my daughter on the playground, which is something I’ve never done,” she says. “It brings me to tears.”

In the race to aid desperate patients like McDonald, TI has plenty of competition. While the Plano (Tex.) company is focusing on high-speed chips that use less power, like the processor in the Eon implant, rival Intel Corp. ( ) is developing networks of sensors that will help doctors monitor elderly and disabled patients. IBM ( ) and Dutch consumer products company Philips Electronics ( ) are also expanding their medical offerings, all of which rely on advanced chips. As a result, the market for medical semiconductors is growing at a brisk 12% a year, says Reno (Nev.) market researcher Databeans Inc., and could hit $4.6 billion in 2012, up from $2.4 billion last year. In contrast, the overall chip market grew just 2.1% in the first half of 2007, according to the Semiconductor Industry Assn.

Decades of innovation have made TI a bellwether among chipmakers. Its signal-processing breakthroughs helped make music and images ubiquitous on the Net. It was also instrumental in shrinking bulky 1990s-era cell phones into today’s slim handsets. And while TI’s medical business made up a tiny $200 million slice of its $14.3 billion inrevenues last year, executives see enormous potential. “When you start talking about prolonging life, these [projects] are really high-value activities,” says Ron Slaymaker, vice-president for investor relations.

ONE WAY TO EXPAND the business is to invest directly in startups. Recently, TI partnered with InCube Labs Inc., which developed a gastric pacemaker that uses faint electric shocks to dull hunger pangs, helping morbidly obese patients lose weight. TI built the power-sipping circuits that generate pulses at just the right frequency without draining the battery, so parts don’t have to be replaced as often.

TI strategists are also following the time-tested route of miniaturization. The company markets chips to companies trying to shrink existing medical equipment–from blood glucose monitors to electrocardiograph machines–so they can be used by consumers to monitor their health at home. “The hospital is the most expensive hotel you can check into. Don’t go there,” says Doug Rasor, TI’s vice-president for emerging medical technologies. With TI’s assistance, General Electric Co. ( ) recently shrank its ultrasound machines to something resembling a laptop computer, so that expectant mothers can observe their babies in the comfort of their own living rooms.

On medicine’s far frontier, TI is collaborating with scientists at the University of Southern California and a startup called Second Sight Inc. to mitigate disease-related blindness. They have created a retinal implant that translates camera images into neural impulses that a blind person perceives as dark and light patches. Over time, patients learn to interpret these patterns as objects, giving them some ability to navigate by sight, if not actually to see.

The team has tested its retinal system, the Argus 16, on six subjects. One of them is Terry Byland, who has been blind for 14 years. Since receiving the Argus in 2004, his vision has improved steadily as his brain progressively adapts to the digital images it receives via a TI microprocessor from a video camera that sits on his glasses. Byland has an 18-year-old son, whom he hasn’t seen since the boy was 5. “Now I can see his shadow moving in front of me,” he says.
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