In this paper, we develop a review of the research focused on the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations with the following three purposes: to get an overview of the existing literature of the topic, to contribute to the integration of the actual knowledge, and to define some possible challenges and perspectives for the further research in the topic. The methodology we followed is a combination of a systematic literature review and a bibliometric analysis. The contributions of the paper are given by the following: shed light on the latest research in this area, present a characterization of the actual research lines regarding the teaching and learning of ordinary differential equations, present some topics to be addressed in the next years and define a starting point for researchers who are interested in developing research in this field.

In this work we develop a study of positive periodic solutions for a mathematical model of the dynamics of computer virus propagation. We propose a generalized compartment model of SEIR-KS type, since we consider that the population is partitioned in five classes: susceptible (S); exposed (E); infected (I); recovered (R); and kill signals (K), and assume that the rates of virus propagation are time dependent functions. Then, we introduce a sufficient condition for the existence of positive periodic solutions of the generalized SEIR-KS model. The proof of the main results are based on a priori estimates of the SEIR-KS system solutions and the application of coincidence degree theory. Moreover, we present an example of a generalized system satisfying the sufficient condition.

We research a control problem for an ecological model given by a reaction–diffusion system. The ecological model is given by a nonlinear parabolic PDE system of three equations modelling the interaction of three species by considering the standard Lotka-Volterra assumptions. The optimal control problem consists of the determination of a coefficient such that the population density of predator decreases. We reformulate the control problem as an optimal control problem by introducing an appropriate cost function. Then, we introduce and prove three types of results. A first contribution of the paper is the well-posedness framework of the mathematical model by considering that the interaction of the species is given by a general functional responses. Second, we study the differentiability properties of a cost function. The third result is the existence of optimal solutions, the existence of an adjoint state, and a characterization of the control function. The first result is proved by the application of semigroup theory and the second and third result are proved by the application of Dubovitskii and Milyutin formalism.

In this paper, we introduce and prove several generalized algebraic-trigonometric inequalities by considering negative exponents in the inequalities.