  We investigate the Cauchy problem of three-dimensional compressible
non-isothermal nematic liquid crystal flows in $\mathbb{R}^3$. We derive the
global existence and uniqueness of strong solutions with both interior and far
field vacuum states provided that the initial data are of small total energy.
This improves our previous work in the sense that the initial data allow
possibly large oscillations. The key analysis is based on delicate energy
estimates and the structural characteristic of the system under consideration.
Moreover, we also show the algebraic decay estimates of the solution. The
results could be viewed as an extension of the studies in Li-Xu-Zhang for the
isothermal case to the non-isothermal situation.
