PREFACE The idea for writing Fundamental QSARs for Metal Ions was inspired by: 1) reading many of the publications from Michael Newman's laboratory on Quantitative Ion Character-Activity Relationships (QICARs), and 2) co-authoring a 2003 review with Monica on Quantitative Cation-Activity Relationships (QCARs) for metal ions. We used the term QSARs in the title because it's the more universally recognized acronym. However, the terms QCARs, QSARs and QICARs are used interchangeably throughout the book, depending upon whose publication we're discussing. When Monica, Michael and I discussed writing the book, we knew it would be a challenging task to write the first book on QSARs for metal ions. At Monica's suggestion, we solicited the contributions of one chapter co-author and two chapter authors who provided chemical properties of metal ions and descriptors to predict metal-ligand binding. Monica co-authored chapter 2 with Maria Pele* and translated parts of chapters 3 and 4 from Romanian to English. Chapter 3 was written by Valentina Uivarosi** and chapter 4 was written by Laszlo Tarko***. Michael wrote chapters 1 and 8 and provided extensive constructive comments on Chapters 2-7. I wrote chapters 5, 6 and 7 and reviewed chapters 1-4 and 8. -- Provided by publisher.