Asymptotic enumeration of correlation-immune boolean functions

A boolean function of $n$ boolean variables is {correlation-immune} of order $k$ if the function value is uncorrelated with the values of any $k$ of the arguments. Such functions are of considerable interest due to their cryptographic properties, and are also related to the orthogonal arrays of statistics and the balanced hypercube colourings of combinatorics. The {weight} of a boolean function is the number of argument values that produce a function value of 1. If this is exactly half the argument values, that is, $2^{n-1}$ values, a correlation-immune function is called {resilient}. An asymptotic estimate of the number $N(n,k)$ of $n$-variable correlation-immune boolean functions of order $k$ was obtained in 1992 by Denisov for constant $k$. Denisov repudiated that estimate in 2000, but we will show that the repudiation was a mistake. The main contribution of this paper is an asymptotic estimate of $N(n,k)$ which holds if $k$ increases with $n$ within generous limits and specialises to functions with a given weight, including the resilient functions. In the case of $k=1$, our estimates are valid for all weights.Comment: 18 page

Cultural Phylogenetics of the Tupi Language Family in Lowland South America

Background: Recent advances in automated assessment of basic vocabulary lists allow the construction of linguistic phylogenies useful for tracing dynamics of human population expansions, reconstructing ancestral cultures, and modeling transition rates of cultural traits over time. Methods: Here we investigate the Tupi expansion, a widely-dispersed language family in lowland South America, with a distance-based phylogeny based on 40-word vocabulary lists from 48 languages. We coded 11 cultural traits across the diverse Tupi family including traditional warfare patterns, post-marital residence, corporate structure, community size, paternity beliefs, sibling terminology, presence of canoes, tattooing, shamanism, men’s houses, and lip plugs. Results/Discussion: The linguistic phylogeny supports a Tupi homeland in west-central Brazil with subsequent major expansions across much of lowland South America. Consistently, ancestral reconstructions of cultural traits over the linguistic phylogeny suggest that social complexity has tended to decline through time, most notably in the independent emergence of several nomadic hunter-gatherer societies. Estimated rates of cultural change across the Tupi expansion are on the order of only a few changes per 10,000 years, in accord with previous cultural phylogenetic results in other languag

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Asymptotic enumeration of correlation-immune boolean functions

A boolean function of n boolean variables is correlation-immune of order k if the function value is uncorrelated with the values of any k of the arguments. Such functions are of considerable interest due to their cryptographic properties, and are also related to the orthogonal arrays of statistics and the balanced hypercube colourings of combinatorics. The weight of a boolean function is the number of argument values that produce a function value of 1. If this is exactly half the argument values, that is, 2n - 1 values, a correlation-immune function is called resilient. An asymptotic estimate of the number N(n,k) of n-variable correlation-immune boolean functions of order k was obtained in 1992 by Denisov for constant k. Denisov repudiated that estimate in 2000, but we show that the repudiation was a mistake. The main contribution of this paper is an asymptotic estimate of N(n,k) which holds if k increases with n within generous limits and specialises to functions with a given weight, including the resilient functions. In the case of k = 1, our estimates are valid for all weights