  To determine the dimension of null space of any given linearized polynomial
is one of vital problems in finite field theory, with concern to design of
modern symmetric cryptosystems. But, the known general theory for this task is
much far from giving the exact dimension when applied to a specific linearized
polynomial. The first contribution of this paper is to give a better general
method to get more precise upper bound on the root number of any given
linearized polynomial. We anticipate this result would be applied as a useful
tool in many research branches of finite field and cryptography. Really we
apply this result to get tighter estimations of the lower bounds on the second
order nonlinearities of general cubic Boolean functions, which has been being
an active research problem during the past decade, with many examples showing
great improvements. Furthermore, this paper shows that by studying the
distribution of radicals of derivatives of a given Boolean functions one can
get a better lower bound of the second-order nonlinearity, through an example
of the monomial Boolean function $g_{\mu}=Tr(\mu x^{2^{2r}+2^r+1})$ over any
finite field $\GF{n}$.
