  The equations of motion and the Bianchi identity of the C-field in M-theory
are encoded in terms of the signature operator. We then reformulate the
topological part of the action in M-theory using the signature, which leads to
connections to the geometry of the underlying manifold, including positive
scalar curvature. This results in a variation on the miraculous cancellation
formula of Alvarez-Gaum\'e and Witten in twelve dimensions and leads naturally
to the Kreck-Stolz s-invariant in eleven dimensions. Hence M-theory detects
diffeomorphism type of eleven-dimensional (and seven-dimensional) manifolds,
and in the restriction to parallelizable manifolds classifies topological
eleven-spheres. Furthermore, requiring the phase of the partition function to
be anomaly-free imposes restrictions on allowed values of the s-invariant.
Relating to string theory in ten dimensions amounts to viewing the bounding
theory as a disk bundle, for which we study the corresponding phase in this
formulation.
