  In an effort to elevate to higher grounds our understanding on the impact of
the formation and evolution of bars in the formation and evolution of galaxies,
we have developed a diagnostic tool to distinguish between recently formed and
evolved bars. Our method was applied in the study of a sample of 14 galaxies
and revealed that, apparently, AGN activity tends to appear in galaxies which
have young bars rather than evolved bars. This suggests that the time scale for
the fueling of AGN by bars is short, and may help to explain, for instance, why
there is not a clear correlation between the presence of bars and AGN in
galaxies.
