This monograph is greatly indebted to the Society of Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA). It was founded in 1965 in order to facilitate the introduction of the Earth’s science advancements into practice, i.e. to prospecting and exploitation of deposits. The first Biennial SGA Meeting was held in Nancy (France) in 1991. Thanks to the attention of Prof. G.C. Amstutz, the famous economic geologist and a founder of the SGA, to the submitted papers the author was lucky to be invited to this Meeting. This successful start continued by participation in the subsequent meetings, held in Granada (Spain; 1993), Prague (Czech Republic; 1995), Turku (Finland; 1997), London (United Kingdom; 1999), Krakow (Poland; 2001), Athens (Greece, 2003) and Beijing (China, 2005). Except of the Third SGA Meeting (the paper, however, was presented), the author attended these meetings with oral presentations. Most often, this was possible due to the financial support from the Organizing Committees.

Now, being ready with this book, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all organizers of these Meetings for a special treatment towards my work, for their appreciation of the modern ideas, organizing the adequate procedure of their reviewing, and welcoming to the Meetings. In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Jan Pasava, who, beginning from 1995 (the Third SGA Meeting in Prague), constantly promoted my papers to be informally reviewed and presented in the SGA Meetings. I thank also M. Pagel, J. Leroy, A. Gize, J. Spangenberg, H. Papunen and other reviewers for their understanding and support of my work.

Overall, there were 16 presentations made at the eight SGA meetings, with their four-page extended abstracts published in the Proceedings. The subject of these papers comprises a main body of this book. It is relevant to the material of all three parts of the monograph, including the concept of the aqua-complex itself, the interpretation of the basic geologic processes in these terms and the applied issues (in particular, how a new view at mineral-forming processes helps to solve the genetic problems of ore, oil and gas deposits, and, as a result, facilitates their prospecting and exploitation). The basic issue of the aqua-complex concept, which concerns the nature of the unity of living and mineral matter, was also discussed in the paper “REDOX as a link between organic and inorganic matter: its role in mineralization” presented in the 7^th SGA Meeting in Athens. A presentation on the subject titled “The United Earth Concept: Theory and Application” was given at the Conference “The Science and the Future: the World Shaping Ideas” (Moscow, the State Geological Museum n. a. V.I. Vernadsky, April 14-16, 2004, p.183-184).

An incommensurate mineral state was not discussed at the SGA Meetings due to its crystallographic specifics. This topic was covered in the oral talk presented at the XI International Conference on Electron Microscopy of Solids (Krynica, Poland; 2002) and the paper “TEM study of incommensurate phases in minerals: implication for material science” was published in (“Materials Chemistry and Physics” 2003, v. 81, p. 237-240).