ANN ARBOR ? Michigan has some new technology bragging rights. The Wolverine state ranked fourth in the nation for dominance in micro and nanotechnology, up from sixth place last year, a Small Times survey shows.

The amount of activity in this category increased across the board, but the good news is that Michigan’s standing outpaced the overall improvement nationwide.

As more and more companies begin to integrate small tech into their products, Michigan will benefit by continuing to research and develop new technologies to supply market demand.

California came in first in the Industry category, followed by California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Texas, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Ohio.

The Industry category includes several measures that gauge the amount of micro and nanotechnology business that exists in a state. Five additional categories ? such as Research and Venture Capital ? are also used in the complete analysis.

The rankings evaluate states based on information from Small Times’ proprietary databases and other resources. The quantitative analysis provides a year-by-year snapshot of the highly competitive race for micro and nanotechnology supremacy.

The Industry category, like all of the categories used in Small Times? analysis, contains several individual measures such as business density that are considered standard for gauging economic growth. The various measures are tallied to create the category score.

The six category scores are, in turn, combined to determine the top 10 states. In addition to the Industry category, the five other categories are:

Research, which measures the amount of research activity in a state as well as its resources.

Venture capital, or the amount and number of private financing deals in a year.

Innovation, which includes patenting and success at landing federal funding for commercializing products.

Work force, which examines the quantity and quality of the labor pool.

Costs, which encompasses salaries, commercial rents and other factors that affect business costs.

In the overall rankings based on all six categories, California took the first-place prize and Massachusetts second in 2004. The other top 10 states, in order of placement, were New Mexico, New York, Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and Ohio.