The higher order neutral functional differential equation $$\frac{{\mathrm{d}}^n}{\mathrm{d}{t}^n}\left[x\left(t\right)+h\left(t\right)x\left(\tau \right(t\left)\right)\right]+\sigma f\left(t,x\left(g\right(t\left)\right)\right)=0\left(1\right)$$ is considered under the following conditions: $n\ge 2$, $\sigma =\pm 1$, $\tau \left(t\right)$ is strictly increasing in $t\in [t_0,\infty )$, $\tau \left(t\right)<t$ for $t\ge t_0$, ${lim}_{t\to \infty }\tau \left(t\right)=\infty$, ${lim}_{t\to \infty }g\left(t\right)=\infty$, and $f(t,u)$ is nonnegative on $[t_0,\infty )\times (0,\infty )$ and nondecreasing in $u\in (0,\infty )$. A necessary and sufficient condition is derived for the existence of certain positive solutions of (1).

The work characterizes when is the equation $y^{\left(n\right)}+\mu p\left(x\right)y=0$ eventually disconjugate for every value of $\mu$ and gives an explicit necessary and sufficient integral criterion for it. For suitable integers $q$, the eventually disconjugate (and disfocal) equation has 2-dimensional subspaces of solutions $y$ such that $y^{\left(i\right)}>0$, $i=0,...,q-1$, ${(-1)}^{i-q}{y}^{\left(i\right)}>0$, $i=q,...,n$. We characterize the “smallest” of such solutions and conjecture the shape of the “largest” one. Examples demonstrate that the estimates are sharp.

In this paper we consider the existence and asymptotic behavior of solutions of the following problem: $$u_{tt}{(t,x)-(\alpha +\beta \parallel \nabla u(t,x)\parallel }_2^2+{\beta \parallel \nabla v(t,x)\parallel }_2^2)\Delta u(t,x)+\delta |u_t{(t,x)|}^{p-1}{u}_t(t,x)={\mu \left|u(t,x)\right|}^{q-1}u(t,x),x\in \Omega ,t\ge 0,v_{tt}{(t,x)-(\alpha +\beta \parallel \nabla u(t,x)\parallel }_2^2+{\beta \parallel \nabla v(t,x)\parallel }_2^2)\Delta v(t,x)+\delta |v_t{(t,x)|}^{p-1}{v}_t(t,x)={\mu \left|v(t,x)\right|}^{q-1}v(t,x),x\in \Omega ,t\ge 0,u(0,x)=u_0\left(x\right),u_t(0,x)=u_1\left(x\right),x\in \Omega ,v(0,x)=v_0\left(x\right),v_t(0,x)=v_1\left(x\right),x\in \Omega ,u{{|}_{{}_{\partial \Omega }}=v|}_{{}_{\partial \Omega }}=0$$ where $q>1$, $p\ge 1$, $\delta >0$, $\alpha >0$, $\beta \ge 0$, $\mu \in ℝ$ and $\Delta$ is the Laplacian in ${ℝ}^N$.

We study the existence of positive solutions of the integral equation $$x\left(t\right)=\mu {\int }_0^{1}k(t,s)f(s,x\left(s\right),x^{\text{'}}\left(s\right),...,x^{(n-1)}\left(s\right))ds,n\ge 2$$ in both $C^{n-1}[0,1]$ and $W^{n-1,p}[0,1]$ spaces, where $p\ge 1$ and $\mu >0$. Throughout this paper $k$ is nonnegative but the nonlinearity $f$ may take negative values. The Krasnosielski fixed point theorem on cone is used.