  Recent developments in understanding the influence of the nucleus on
deep-inelastic structure functions, the EMC effect, are reviewed. A new data
base which expresses ratios of structure functions in terms of the Bjorken
variable $x_A=AQ^2/(2M_A q_0)$ is presented. Information about two-nucleon
short-range correlations from experiments is also discussed and the remarkable
linear relation between short-range correlations and teh EMC effect is
reviewed. A convolution model that relates the underlying source of the EMC
effect to modification of either the mean-field nucleons or the short-range
correlated nucleons is presented. It is shown that both approaches are equally
successful in describing the current EMC data.
