The class of generating functions for completely monotone sequences (moments of finite positive measures on $[0,1]$) has an elegant characterization as the class of Pick functions analytic and positive on $(-\infty,1)$. We establish this and another such characterization and develop a variety of consequences. In particular, we characterize generating functions for moments of convex and concave probability distribution functions on $[0,1]$, and we provide a simple analytic proof that for any real $p,r>0$, the Fuss-Catalan or Raney numbers $\frac{r}{pn+r}\binom{pn+r}{n}$, $n=0,1,\ldots$ are the moments of a probability distribution on some interval $[0,\tau]$ if and only if $p\ge1$ and $p\ge r$.

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This paper studies the moment boundedness of solutions of linear stochastic delay differential equations with distributed delay. For a linear stochastic delay differential equation, the rst moment stability is known to be identical to that of the corresponding deterministic delay differential equation. However, boundedness of the second moment is complicated and depends on the stochastic terms. In this paper, the characteristic function of the equation is obtained through techniques of the Laplace transform. From the characteristic equation, suf cient conditions for the second moment to be bounded or unbounded are proposed.

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In this paper, we study the existence of homoclinic solutions for a class of fourth order differential equations. By using variational methods, the existence and the non-existence of nontrivial homoclinic solutions are obtained, depending on a parameter.