The study of stellar populations in galaxies is entering a new era with the availability of large and high quality databases of both observed galactic spectra and state-of-the-art evolutionary synthesis models. The power of spectral synthesis can be investigated as a mean to estimate physical properties of galaxies. Spectral synthesis is nothing more than the decomposition of an observed spectrum in terms of a superposition of a base of simple stellar populations of various ages and metallicities, producing astrophysically interesting output such as the star-formation and chemical enrichment histories of a galaxy, its extinction and velocity dispersion. This is what the STARLIGHT spectral synthesis code does.

BOND determines oxygen and nitrogen abundances in giant H II regions by comparison with a large grid of photoionization models. The grid spans a wide range in O/H, N/O and ionization parameter U, and covers different starburst ages and nebular geometries. Unlike other statistical methods, BOND relies on the [Ar III]/[Ne III] emission line ratio to break the oxygen abundance bimodality. By doing so, it can measure oxygen and nitrogen abundances without assuming any a priori relation between N/O and O/H. BOND takes into account changes in the hardness of the ionizing radiation field, which can come about due to the ageing of H II regions or the stochastically sampling of the IMF. The emission line ratio He I/Hβ, in addition to commonly used strong lines, constrains the hardness of the ionizing radiation field. BOND relies on the emission line ratios [O III]/Hβ, [O II]/Hβ and [N II]/Hβ, [Ar III]/Hβ, [Ne III]/Hβ, He I/Hβ as its input parameters, while its output values are the measurements and uncertainties for O/H and N/O.