This paper consists of three parts: First, letting $b_1(z)$, $b_2(z)$, $p_1(z)$ and $p_2(z)$ be nonzero polynomials such that $p_1(z)$ and $p_2(z)$ have the same degree $k\geq 1$ and distinct leading coefficients $1$ and $\alpha$, respectively, we solve entire solutions of the Tumura–Clunie type differential equation $f^{n}+P(z,\,f)=b_1(z)e^{p_1(z)}+b_2(z)e^{p_2(z)}$, where $n\geq 2$ is an integer, $P(z,\,f)$ is a differential polynomial in $f$ of degree $\leq n-1$ with coefficients having polynomial growth. Second, we study the oscillation of the second-order differential equation $f''-[b_1(z)e^{p_1(z)}+b_2(z)e^{p_2(z)}]f=0$ and prove that $\alpha =[2(m+1)-1]/[2(m+1)]$ for some integer $m\geq 0$ if this equation admits a nontrivial solution such that $\lambda (f)<\infty$. This partially answers a question of Ishizaki. Finally, letting $b_2\not =0$ and $b_3$ be constants and $l$ and $s$ be relatively prime integers such that $l> s\geq 1$, we prove that $l=2$ if the equation $f''-(e^{lz}+b_2e^{sz}+b_3)f=0$ admits two linearly independent solutions $f_1$ and $f_2$ such that $\max \{\lambda (f_1),\,\lambda (f_2)\}<\infty$. In particular, we precisely characterize all solutions such that $\lambda (f)<\infty$ when $l=2$ and $l=4$.

As a consequence of the main result of this paper efficient conditions guaranteeing the existence of a T −periodic solution to the second-order differential equation

$${u}^{\prime \prime} = \displaystyle{{h(t)} \over {u^\lambda }}$$

We consider the positive zeros j″vk, k = 1, 2,…, of the second derivative of the Bessel function Jν(x). We are interested first in how many zeros there are on the interval (0,jν1), where jν1 is the smallest positive zero of Jν(x). We show that there exists a number ƛ = —0.19937078… such that and . Moreover, j″v1 decreases to 0 and j″ν2 increases to j″01 as ν increases from ƛ to 0. Further, j″vk increases in —1 < ν< ∞, for k = 3,4,… Monotonicity properties are established also for ordinates, and the slopes at the ordinates, of the points of inflection when — 1 < ν < 0.