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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
This paper is concerned with the sign properties of the S-functions sλ for real arguments. We show first that sλ is indefinite if any part of the partition λ is odd. Thus it is only if all parts of λ are even that sλ can possibly be positive definite or semi-definite. In this case we show that sλ(x) is positive provided that at least l(λ) of the components of x are non-zero, where l(λ) is the number of parts of the partition λ.