Stellar populations, building blocks of galaxies, are direct tracers of the
star formation history, the chemical enrichment and the assembly of galaxies in
the Universe. They therfore allow us to understand how galaxies formed and
evolved. This last decade has witnessed a revolution in our observations of
galaxies; with larger telescopes and new instruments we are not only able to
look deeper in the Universe, we can also study nearby galaxies with greater
detail. The fact that now is becoming possible to resolve stars up to the
distance of Virgo Cluster allows us to rigorously compare and calibrate the
analysis of the integrated light with resolved stellar populations. These
Proceedings report the considerable progress made in recent years in this
topic. Theorists and observers, researchers of resolved and unresolved stellar
populations, discussed the ingredients of stellar population models, and
rigorously compared them to new data, forcing theorists to develop more refined
models and methods to derive the physical parameters of the stellar
populations. New results from the Milky Way, the Local Group, and nearby and
distant galaxies were presented.Comment: This is the table of contents of the upcoming proceedings of IAU
Symposium 241. The book will appear in September, from Cambridge University
Press, and will also be available electronically at
http://www.journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=IA