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6. SELF-CONSISTENT STAR FORMATION HISTORIES

Now I will attempt to make the previous five sections relevant to an audience of stellar astronomers. In this last section I will show some directly observable connections between stellar evolution as observed in stars and chemical evolution as observed in the ISM. The goal is to obtain constraints on the star formation histories of galaxies. When the constraints are in agreement, they merit the label "self-consistent". The examples I am going to show come from dwarf galaxies, which are, hopefully, simple enough systems that we can make some progress.