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38 Studios is the game developer behind Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, and was started by former Major League pitcher Curt Schilling. The game has enjoyed a reasonable amount of success, selling nearly 1 million copies. However, not everything is looking up for the company or the state of Rhode Island which provided a $75 million guaranteed loan to help lure the company to the state from Massachusetts. The deal that looked promising from the start with the star power of Schilling and the down economy of Providence hasn't panned out. The company has reportedly missed a $1.1 million interest payment due at the first of this month and claims it doesn't have enough money to pay its employees. 38 Studios is scheduled to pay $12.7 million to the state per year until 2020, but at this rate it looks like the taxpayers of Rhode Island might be on the hook for the money.

The other day Ubisoft announced the Far Cry 3 multiplayer beta will go live this summer for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. You may notice the PC is missing from that list and could have just been a small oversight. However, when reached for comment Ubisoft declared there will be no Far Cry 3 multiplayer beta for the PC. That is a major bummer considering the series originally started on the PC, but has been slowly drifting away from the platform once Crytek was no longer at the helm. This is just another dagger in the heart of PC gamers everywhere, as Ubisoft has no plans for a Far Cry 3 beta of any kind on the PC. It could be that Ubisoft just does not want to deal with any potential backlash if a PC beta included DRM, but at least PC gamers will get to experience Far Cry 3 when it arrives on September 4th.

Independent developers have decided to join forces for a massive game sale next week called Because We May. More than 40 indie games will be priced at whatever the studio sees fit starting on May 24th. The developers believe game prices should be set at whatever price the developer wants without interference from the store. This allows easier promotion of the games and enables more people to purchase the game. The indie developers will have 46 games discounted on Steam, Apple's App Store, and Google Play, so May 24th to June 1st will be the perfect time to save on Frozen Synapse, The Binding of Isaac, World of Goo, Osmos, DeathSpank, and dozens more. The prices are currently unknown, so be sure to hit up the Because We May website, Steam, or your smartphone's marketplace to check out just how far the developers discount the games.

One of the reasons we have the technology we currently do, like MP3 players, smartphones, PCs, and a great deal more, is because semiconductor transistors were developed to replace bulky vacuum tubes. While semiconductors allowed technology to drastically shrink in size, their use does not come without some costs. High-radiation environments, such as space, can damage semiconductors, and electrons travel slower in them than in vacuum tubes. Of course we cannot go back to classic vacuum tubes, especially with some modern computers components having billions of transistors, but researchers have devised a vacuum channel transistor which combines the best of both technologies.

As reported in the American Institute of Physics' Applied Physics Letters journal, researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center, and the National Nanofab Center in Korea have designed a vacuum channel transistor that is roughly 150 nm long and can be made with current fabrication methods. At 150 nm long this is obviously a much larger device than the 22 nm and 32 nm transistors we see in current CPUs. Its current size does allow it to operate on less than 10 V though, and the researchers believe they can improve the design to operate at about 1 V, which would put it in competition with modern semiconductor transistors. Once that is achieved, it will probably start appearing in places modern semiconductors just do not survive or are not always fast enough.

It sounds like the Battlefield Premium service is no longer a rumor, as multiple sources have told Battlefieldo it will arrive on June 4th. Previously Battlefield Premium was thought to be a subscription service, but now it is looking more like a DLC bundle containg all five pieces of Battlefield 3 DLC. Battlefield Premium will also include the camo and in-game items mentioned previously, but anyone who purchases will also gain access to future BF3 map packs. The more and more is leaked about Battlefield Premium makes it sound all the more like Call of Duty ELITE, especially with future map pack access. Once upon a time DICE did not want Battlefield 3 to become another Call of Duty with $15 map packs and even urged EA to steer clear of it. If these features of Battlefield Premium turn out to be true (and the $50 price), we could be looking at another CoD feature clone.

Two materials that may be very influential in the future of technology are graphene and quantum dots. Both of these materials have special properties that can be controlled by manipulating their size and shape. The characteristics of a sheet of pure graphene are defined by its edges and quantum dots have their optical properties defined by their size. Obviously then, there has to be a way to precisely control the creation of graphene quantum dots, which researchers at Kansas State University have achieved.

The researchers use a diamond knife to cut apart a piece of graphite into graphite nanoblocks. These nanoblocks are then exfoliated to create ultrasmall sheets of graphene of specific size and shape. This is not the first method to make graphene quantum dots, but it is more efficient than others as it can create large quantities of the dots with controlled structures.

This research could lead to many developments in electronics and optoelectronics, by making graphene quantum dots so accessible to other researchers, and eventually the consumer. Quantum dots can be used in communication systems as a laser-light source, in solar panels as the photoelectric element, and in displays as the sub-pixels, to list just a few examples.

Many materials can be described as crystals because their molecule structure is well ordered and repeats. Those materials with disorderly structures are called glasses, and they can have some interesting properties. In the case of metallic glasses, instead of sharply transitioning from a solid to a liquid when heated, the phase change may take place slowly, over a greater range of temperatures. Some metallic glasses will actually exist in a part molten part solid state.

The properties of glasses, like many other materials, are defined by their molecular structure, which researchers had thought was comprised of pentagons in metallic glasses. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison have successfully identified other shapes in the mix too. Squares and hexagon were found in the one-to-three nanometer range, which has traditionally been a hard resolution to observe.

Knowledge like this could lead to more uses of metallic glasses, which are primarily found in electrical transformer cores at the moment. These materials have a great deal of potential though as they can be molded like plastic and their manufacturing methods extend to the micro and nanoscale. We may see metallic glasses one day being used to grow forests of nanowires and even the world's smallest geared motor.

If you are eager to try your hand at Runic Games' upcoming Torchlight II, you are in luck. This weekend will be the final stress test for Torchlight II before the full game launches, so now is your chance to try it out. Just head over to the Runic website, create your account (if you do not have one already), and hope you are fortunate enough to get a beta key. The stress test started a little over an hour ago and will run until Tuesday at 11:00am PDT. This should give you plenty of time to try out the new classes (like Embermage and Berserker), check out the variety of new pets, and see just how much of that sweet, sweet loot you can acquire before the stress test ends. Runic will be ending the beta soon after the stress test, since it feels getting the beta finished earlier means the sooner we can get our hands on Torchlight II in full.

Torchlight II should be out soon and you can pre-order it now for $19.99. Pre-ordering on Steam will also net you a copy of the first Torchlight, which you can give to a friend if they have not experienced it yet.

When most people think of semiconductors they think of silicon, but the family of semiconducting materials is much larger than just one compound. Gallium Nitride (GaN) is another semiconductor that has been in use since the 1990s, thanks to its high efficiency and high voltage operation. At such high voltages though, the material will put out a great deal of heat, which can greatly shorten its lifespan and limit its application. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have given the material new life with a new cooling system that can drop temperatures by as much as 20 ºC.

This new material is based on graphene, a form of carbon that makes a sheet just one-atom thick. It is not single-layer graphene that is used though, but multiple layers to the point of the reaching graphite. In some ways graphite can be thought of as multiple layers of graphene, but it is not quite that simple as the graphene in pencil lead is not so well ordered.

Both single and multi-layered graphene conduct heat very well, which is what the researchers were hoping for. In fact the researchers were able to drop the temperature in some hot spots by 20 ºC and computer simulations suggest ways to make it even more efficient.

Several crafty gamers have stumbled upon Whimsyshire - Diablo III's bubbly secret level which oozes a blindingly vivid color palette. The mystical level pits players against the cute and cuddly forces of unicorns and teddy bears, but these charming creatures are the equivalent of Act Four enemies, and they can get pretty ruthless if you let your guard down. Getting to the neon landscape of Whimsyshire involves collecting a medley of particular items spread out across the four acts, and whether you've finished the game or not, you can conveniently access the rainbow-filled hidden level at any time.