Minneapolis/St. Paul has lost some of its intelligence in the last year, according to the second annual list of America's smartest cities released by online news source The Daily Beast.

The Twin Cities was ranked as the eighth-smartest metropolitan area with a Daily Beast IQ score of 138.34-down four spots from last year when the metro ranked number four with a score of 159.

According to this year's ranking, 25 percent of Twin Cities residents have bachelor's degrees, while 12 percent have graduate degrees.

Boston came in at number one on the list, with a score of 176.68, up from last year when it came in third.

The other metropolitan areas that rounded out the top five were Hartford/New Haven, Connecticut (159.98); the San Francisco Bay area (156.69); Raleigh/Durham, North Carolina (148.36)-which came in first in 2009-and Denver (146.70).

Las Vegas came in the last spot with an IQ score of 3.33. Fresno, California-which placed last in 2009-moved up and is now third-from-last on the list.

The Daily Beast only ranked metropolitan areas (major cities and their suburbs) of 1 million people or more, using census data, which turned out to include 55 cities.

The ranking criteria was divided into two parts: education and intellectual environment.

The education half encompassed the percentage of residents over age 25 that had bachelor's degrees and the percentage that had graduate degrees compared to the overall population over age 25.

The intellectual environment half had three subparts: year-to-date nonfiction book sales; the ratio of institutions of higher education, as defined by the federal government; and libraries per capita. The libraries per capita part of the criteria replaced last year's voter turnout criteria.

The Daily Beast was started in 2008 and features online news and opinion pieces.