  We show that the shifted rank, or srank, of any partition $\lambda$ with
distinct parts equals the lowest degree of the terms appearing in the expansion
of Schur's $Q_{\lambda}$ function in terms of power sum symmetric functions.
This gives an affirmative answer to a conjecture of Clifford. As pointed out by
Clifford, the notion of the srank can be naturally extended to a skew partition
$\lambda/\mu$ as the minimum number of bars among the corresponding skew bar
tableaux. While the srank conjecture is not valid for skew partitions, we give
an algorithm to compute the srank.
