In this paper, positive solutions of fractional differential equations with nonlinear terms depending on lower-order derivatives on a half-line are investigated. The positive extremal solutions and iterative schemes for approximating them are obtained by applying a monotone iterative method. An example is presented to illustrate the main results.

Motivated by some non-local boundary-value problems (BVPs) that arise in heat-flow problems, we establish new results for the existence of non-zero solutions of integral equations of the form

$$ u(t)=\gamma(t)\alpha[u]+\int_{G}k(t,s)f(s,u(s))\,\mathrm{d}s, $$

where $G$ is a compact set in $\mathbb{R}^{n}$. Here $\alpha[u]$ is a positive functional and $f$ is positive, while $k$ and $\gamma$ may change sign, so positive solutions need not exist. We prove the existence of multiple non-zero solutions of the BVPs under suitable conditions. We show that solutions of the BVPs lose positivity as a parameter decreases. For a certain parameter range not all solutions can be positive, but for one of the boundary conditions we consider we show that there are positive solutions for certain types of nonlinearity. We also prove a uniqueness result.

We consider a class of even-order boundary-value problems with nonlinear boundary conditions and an eigenvalue parameter $\lambda$ in the equations. Sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence and non-existence of positive solutions of the problems for different values of $\lambda$.