We consider the existence of positive solutions of the singular nonlinear semipositone problem of the form $$\left\{\begin{array}{c}-{\mathrm{div}\left(\right|x|}^{-\alpha p}{\left|\nabla u\right|}^{p-2}{\nabla u)=|x|}^{-(\alpha +1)p+\beta }\left(a{u}^{p-1}-f\left(u\right)-{\displaystyle \frac{c}{u^{\gamma }}}\right),x\in \Omega ,\hfill \\ u=0,x\in \partial \Omega ,\hfill \end{array}\right.$$ where $\Omega$ is a bounded smooth domain of ${ℝ}^N$ with $0\in \Omega$, $1<p<N$, $0\le \alpha <(N-p)/p$, $\gamma \in (0,1)$, and $a$, $\beta$, $c$ and $\lambda$ are positive parameters. Here $f:[0,\infty )\to ℝ$ is a continuous function. This model arises in the studies of population biology of one species with $u$ representing the concentration of the species. We discuss the existence of a positive solution when $f$ satisfies certain additional conditions. We use the method of sub-supersolutions...

If $\Omega \subset {ℝ}^n$ is a bounded domain with Lipschitz boundary $\partial \Omega$ and $\Gamma$ is an open subset of $\partial \Omega$, we prove that the following inequality $${\left({\int }_{\Omega }{\left|A\left(x\right)\nabla u\left(x\right)\right|}^{p}dx\right)}^{1/p}+{\left({\int }_{\Gamma }{\left|u\left(x\right)\right|}^{p}d{\mathscr{H}}^{n-1}\left(x\right)\right)}^{1/p}\ge c{\parallel u\parallel }_{W^{1,p}\left(\Omega \right)}$$ holds for all $u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega ;{ℝ}^m)$ and $1<p<\infty$, where $${\left(A\left(x\right)\nabla u\left(x\right)\right)}_k=\sum _{i=1}^m\sum _{j=1}^n{a}_k^{ij}\left(x\right)\frac{\partial u_i}{\partial x_j}\left(x\right)(k=1,2,...,r;r\ge m)$$ defines an elliptic differential operator of first order with continuous coefficients on $\overline{\Omega }$. As a special case we obtain $${\int }_{\Omega }{\left|\nabla u\left(x\right)F\left(x\right)+{\left(\nabla u\left(x\right)F\left(x\right)\right)}^T\right|}^{p}dx\ge c{\int }_{\Omega }{\left|\nabla u\left(x\right)\right|}^{p}dx,(*)$$ for all $u\in W^{1,p}(\Omega ;{ℝ}^n)$ vanishing on $\Gamma$, where $F:\overline{\Omega }\to M^{n\times n}\left(ℝ\right)$ is a continuous mapping with $detF\left(x\right)\ge \mu >0$. Next we show that $(*)$ is not valid if $n\ge 3$, $F\in L^{\infty }\left(\Omega \right)$ and $detF\left(x\right)=1$, but does hold if $p=2$, $\Gamma =\partial \Omega$ and $F\left(x\right)$ is symmetric and positive definite in $\Omega$.

We establish an a priori estimate for the second derivatives of local minimizers of integral functionals of the form $$ℱ(\nu ,\mathrm{\Omega })={\int }_{\mathrm{\Omega }}f(x,D\nu (x))𝑑x$$ with convex integrand with respect to the gradient variable, assuming that the function that measures the oscillation of the integrand with respect to the $x$ variable belongs to a suitable Sobolev space. The novelty here is that we deal with integrands satisfying subquadratic growth conditions with respect to gradient variable.

We study the existence of positive solutions for the $p$-Laplace Emden-Fowler equation. Let $H$ and $G$ be closed subgroups of the orthogonal group $O\left(N\right)$ such that $HG\subset O\left(N\right)$. We denote the orbit of $G$ through $x\in {ℝ}^N$ by $G\left(x\right)$, i.e., $G\left(x\right):=\{gx:g\in G\}$. We prove that if $H\left(x\right)G\left(x\right)$ for all $x\in \overline{\Omega }$ and the first eigenvalue of the $p$-Laplacian is large enough, then no $H$ invariant least energy solution is $G$ invariant. Here an $H$ invariant least energy solution means a solution which achieves the minimum of the Rayleigh quotient among all $H$ invariant...

Se il problema di minimo $({𝒫}_{\mathrm{\infty }})$ è il limite, in senso variazionale, di una successione di problemi di minimo con ostacoli del tipo $$\underset{u\ge {\psi }_h}{\min }{\int }_A\left[f_h(x,u,Du)+b(x,u)\right]𝑑x,$$ allora $({𝒫}_{\mathrm{\infty }})$ può essere scritto nella forma $$\underset{u}{\min }\left\{{\int }_A\left[f_{\mathrm{\infty }}(x,u,Du)+b(x,u)\right]𝑑x+{\int }_A{g}_{\mathrm{\infty }}(x,\tilde{u}(x))𝑑{\lambda }_{\mathrm{\infty }}(x)\right\}$$ dove $\tilde{u}$ è un conveniente rappresentante di $u$ e ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{\infty }}$ è una misura non negativa.