Let N be a sufficiently large integer. We prove that, with at most $O(N^{23/48+\varepsilon })$ exceptions, all even positive integers up to N can be represented in the form $p_1^2+p_2^3+p_3^3+p_4^3+p_5^3+p_6^4$ , where $p_1,p_2,p_3,p_4,p_5,p_6$ are prime numbers.

We prove that every sufficiently large even integer can be represented as the sum of two squares of primes, four cubes of primes and 28 powers of two. This improves the result obtained by Liu and Lü [‘Two results on powers of 2 in Waring–Goldbach problem’, J. Number Theory 131(4) (2011), 716–736].

We improve some results in our paper [A. Languasco and A. Zaccagnini, ‘Short intervals asymptotic formulae for binary problems with prime powers’, J. Théor. Nombres Bordeaux30 (2018) 609–635] about the asymptotic formulae in short intervals for the average number of representations of integers of the forms $n=p_{1}^{\ell _{1}}+p_{2}^{\ell _{2}}$ and $n=p^{\ell _{1}}+m^{\ell _{2}}$, where $\ell _{1},\ell _{2}\geq 2$ are fixed integers, $p,p_{1},p_{2}$ are prime numbers and $m$ is an integer. We also remark that the techniques here used let us prove that a suitable asymptotic formula for the average number of representations of integers $n=\sum _{i=1}^{s}p_{i}^{\ell }$, where $s$, $\ell$ are two integers such that $2\leq s\leq \ell -1$, $\ell \geq 3$ and $p_{i}$, $i=1,\ldots ,s$, are prime numbers, holds in short intervals.

Let ${{a}_{1}},...,{{a}_{9}}$ be nonzero integers and $n$ any integer. Suppose that ${{a}_{1}}+\cdot \cdot \cdot +{{a}_{9}}\,\equiv \,n\,\left( \bmod \,2 \right)$ and $\left( {{a}_{i}},\,{{a}_{j}} \right)\,=\,1$ for $1\,\le \,i\,<\,j\,\le \,9$. In this paper we prove the following:

(i) If ${{a}_{j}}$ are not all of the same sign, then the cubic equation ${{a}_{1}}p_{1}^{3}\,+\cdot \cdot \cdot +\,{{a}_{9}}\,p_{9}^{3}\,=\,n$ has prime solutions satisfying ${{p}_{j}}\,\ll \,{{\left| n \right|}^{{1}/{3}\;}}\,+\,\max {{\left\{ \left| {{a}_{j}} \right| \right\}}^{14+\varepsilon }}$.

(ii) If all ${{a}_{j}}$ are positive and $n\,\gg \,\max {{\left\{ \left| {{a}_{j}} \right| \right\}}^{43+\varepsilon }}$, then ${{a}_{1}}p_{1}^{3}\,+\cdot \cdot \cdot +\,{{a}_{9}}\,p_{9}^{3}\,=\,n$ is solvable in primes ${{p}_{j}}$.

These results are an extension of the linear and quadratic relative problems.